Experiments
Every experiment connects a mapped nervous system to a simulated body and world. The world feeds the senses, the real wiring does the rest. 14 run in your browser; switch any of them to a rewired brain and see what survives.
Reflexes and behaviours
What the wiring does on its own, with no training: escape, feeding, backing away, turning from a wall.
Worm hits the edge of the dish
The real 302 neuron wiring diagram crawls around a dish and backs away when its nose touches the wall.
Worm searches for food
An odour gradient, one OFF sensor and the real wiring: does the worm find the bacteria?
Fly escapes a looming shadow
The real FlyWire escape pathway: 1,067 neurons between the looming detectors and the Giant Fiber, every measured synapse.
The whole fly brain escapes a looming shadow
The looming escape experiment on all 139,000 neurons of FlyWire, on your own computer.
Taste and feed
Sugar makes MN9 fire and the proboscis come out; bitter keeps it in. No training: the reflex is in the wiring.
Back away from a wall
A wall looms ahead, LC16 fires, the moonwalker neurons take over and the fly walks backwards. No training.
Movement and steering
Driving, flying and chasing, with a readout trained on the fixed circuit.
A real fly circuit drives a car
1,325 FlyWire neurons, fixed. Collision detectors see the walls, a trained readout of 20 descending neurons turns the wheel.
Fly parallel parks (teaching brain)
A teaching demo on an invented fly brain: forward, reverse and steering from the circuit layout textbooks describe.
Hold a course in gusty flight
Gusts knock the flying fly off course. Its motion sensing HS cells and a bar ahead guide a trained steering readout.
Chase a moving target
Follow another fly around an arena, as a courting male does. Two readouts steer and set the walking speed.
Games
Poker, Pong and an obstacle run: tasks a fly never evolved for.
Fly runner
Water drops, stones and spiders roll towards the fly. Every hop is a Giant Fiber escape in the real FlyWire circuit.
Fly plays Minecraft
The viral 2026 demo: a fly connectome walks, turns and jumps through a Minecraft world.
The fly plays poker
Kuhn poker, the smallest real poker, played by 1,846 FlyWire neurons and a trained readout of 21 output neurons.
The fly plays Pong
A ball bounces towards the fly. Its collision detectors see which side the ball is on; a trained readout moves the paddle.
Choice and memory
Where a circuit without learning meets its limits, the results say so.
Odour T-maze with a delay
Smell odour A, turn left; smell odour B, turn right. Then the same after a pause, which needs memory.
Two flowers: learn which one pays
One flower gives sugar 80% of the time, the other 20%, and they swap halfway. Chance is 50%.