The whole fly brain escapes a looming shadow
Does the full brain, with every neuron outside the escape circuit present, still produce a clean take off?
What happens
Identical world and scoring to “Fly escapes a looming shadow”, but the brain is the complete FlyWire connectome in the local runner, so input from the rest of the brain is no longer missing.
The whole brain is too large to simulate in a browser tab in real time, so the runner does the heavy lifting and this page shows the fly, the signals and the log.
How the brain is wired to the world
The mapping is part of the experiment design. Everything between senses and motor output is the connectome.
- Looming object → LC4 and LPLC2 on the side it comes from
- Giant Fiber (DNp01) above 60 Hz → take off
Dataset: FlyWire connectome v783 with Schlegel et al. 2024 annotations. About this dataset
Run it locally
Every experiment can also use the local runner, which simulates the brain on your own computer. It is required for connectomes too large for a browser.
git clone https://github.com/berkeyc/connectome-lab.git cd connectome-lab pip install -r local/requirements.txt python local/runner.py # listens on ws://localhost:8765
Then choose “Local runner” in the player controls and press Restart. Your browser may ask for permission to connect to a local device.
- Import the whole brain first: python pipeline/import_flywire_v783.py (downloads about 100 MB from the published Shiu et al. repository and the FlyWire annotations).
- Then start the runner: python local/runner.py
- Expect the full brain to run slower than real time on a laptop; the page shows the current speed.