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FutureBit, maker of the Apollo ASIC miners, released HashFly, a browser-based proof of concept that simulates part of a fruit fly's neural connectome—recently mapped and shared by Google—to process simplified Bitcoin-style hashing tasks. The demo uses simulated photoreceptor and PPL101 neurons to check double-SHA-256 targets, with adjustable difficulty levels far below real Bitcoin mining complexity.
A Reddit user known as ActualAerie1011 says they used a custom trainer algorithm alongside Google's recently released fruit fly connectome to play the card game Balatro on its easiest settings. The setup pits the simulated brain against an algorithm that hunts for favorable game seeds, comparing outcomes and reinforcing the brain's decisions through repeated trials. The creator reports a current 20% success rate and says training is ongoing, though no code or detailed methodology has been shared publicly.
A WIRED writer created a project called PitchFly using an open-source connectome mapping 165,112 neurons and 125 million synapses from a male fruit fly's brain. By feeding it hundreds of the outlet's top-performing headlines converted into numerical representations, the simulated neural circuitry began remixing patterns into new, often absurd story pitches. The system doesn't understand language—it's simply replicating firing patterns from real biological data to produce novel combinations.
A Show HN project called Fly.exe runs a Drosophila brain simulator built from the released male central nervous system connectome — 165,122 neurons and over 25 million synaptic connections — driving a physical fly body model in real time on a single GPU. The demo scales this to twelve independent fly bodies sharing one MuJoCo physics scene, each executing its own copy of the full neural network and interacting through a simplified, analytic form of vision rather than rendered images.
Google Research and HHMI Janelia released MaleCNS v1.0, a dataset mapping over 166,000 neurons from a male fruit fly's brain and nervous system, built by converting millions of 2D images into 3D neural reconstructions. Developers quickly began using the model outside its intended scientific purpose, wiring its simulated neurons to control games like Doom and Super Mario 64, where sensory input from game frames drives neural activity that translates into player actions.
Scientists completed a full map of a male fruit fly's nervous system, detailing its neurons and connections. Programmers have since used this neural map to build simulations that let a virtual version of the fly's brain attempt to play games like Doom and Super Mario 64.
Google Research, working with HHMI Janelia Research Campus, published the first complete map of an adult male fruit fly's brain and central nervous system, called MaleCNS v1.0. The AI-assisted project stitched together millions of 2D images into a 3D model reconstructing more than 166,000 neurons. Within days, software engineers used the connectome data to train a simulated version of the fly's neural circuitry to play Doom and Super Mario 64.
Researchers from Google and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have finished mapping every neuron and synaptic connection in the brain of a male fruit fly. This male connectome joins a female Drosophila map completed earlier this year, giving scientists two complete wiring diagrams of the same species' brain for comparison. The project combined Janelia's imaging expertise with Google's computational tools to process hundreds of millions of synapses.
Researchers modeled a cerebellum-like neural circuit to examine how a class of interneurons, called MG cells, influence the ability of ON and OFF output neurons to cancel predictable self-generated sensory signals, using an electric organ discharge mimic as the test stimulus. They found that the selectivity of synaptic connections—whether MG cells act mainly on broad spikes versus equally on broad and narrow spikes—determines whether these cells help or hinder the cancellation process.