They uploaded a fruit fly.
the first bug in the matrix??
Yesterday, EONSYS published an article where they combined the connectome of a female fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and a physics-simulated body to create a full body simulation:
Basically, here’s how it works:
The brain:
In 2024, Eon published a computational model of the entire adult fruit fly brain. This model includes over 125,000 neurons and 50 million synaptic connections, built using the FlyWire connectome and machine learning for neurotransmitter identification. This model could predict the fly’s motor behaviour with 95% accuracy but lacked a physical embodiment.
you can find the datasets here! What is a connectome?
Basically, a connectome is a comprehensive map of all neural connections within a nervous system. Each physical individual neuron and synapse have been mapped out and digitised for the fruit fly.
A few limitations of this include:
Doesn’t capture the types of neurotransmitter released at synapses, how much is released, or how receptors respond. This is partially addressed by EONSYS using “machine learning predictions of neurotransmitter identity”.
Also doesn’t account for hormone changes, widespread neuromodulation, or non-synaptic communication which all affect how the brain processes information.
The body:
To give the digital fly brain the ability to move, EONSYS integrated their model with a physics-simulated fly body using a framework called NeuroMechFly v2.
This is how they close the loop for full sensorimotor simulation. The simulated fly actually receives sensory input from its virtual environment, that data physically flows through the digitised connectome which processes it, and then sends motor commands back out to move the virtual body.
This is an insanely cool development, and EONSYS is now planning on scaling this to simulating a mouse. That being said, this does raise a lot of ethical considerations:
Digital suffering: If we emulate a fruit fly brain so perfectly that it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart, does it experience the world like one? EONSYS at least thinks so, and have introduced a variety of stimuli in the fly’s environment to keep it occupied.
The consciousness threshold: At what point does a simulation stop being just binary code and start becoming actual consciousness? If a digital brain can react to its environment, process sensory input, and execute autonomous behaviors, is it ‘alive’ in any meaningful sense? What implications does this have for LLM consciousness?
The path to human mind uploading: EONSYS have outlined that mapping a fly brain is just a stepping stone laying the groundwork for human-scale emulation. If (or when) we reach the point of digitising an 86-billion-neuron human brain, who owns the digital copy of a mind? Is it considered a continuation of the person? What happens to privacy and rights when your actual neural wiring is sitting on a server? I’d highly recommend Pantheon for anyone interested, it addresses a lot of these themes and concepts.
I say this basically every day but I’m genuinely so excited for the future. That’s it for today, hope you guys enjoyed and lmk what you think about the ethical implications of simulating flies!