A Drosophila computational brain model reveals sensorimotor processing Philip K. Shiu, Gabriella R. Sterne, Nico Spiller, Romain Franconville, Andrea Sandoval, Joie Zhou, Neha Simha, Chan Hyuk Kang, Seongbong Yu, Jinseop S. Kim, Sven Dorkenwald, Arie Matsliah, Philipp Schlegel, Szi-chieh Yu, Claire E. McKellar, Amy Sterling, Marta Costa, Katharina Eichler, Alexander Shakeel Bates, Nils Eckstein, Jan Funke, Gregory S. X. E. Jefferis, Mala Murthy, Salil S. Bidaye, Stefanie Hampel, Andrew M. Seeds Kristin Scott
Could digital consciousness become a reality in our lifetime? The answer: Possibly. Scientists published a brain model of a fly, containing over 50 million connections, so accurate that it matched a biological fly’s neural responses with 91% accuracy.
Eon Systems, a company that specializes in brain simulation, has done what many would have considered impossible. The researchers have taken the model of the fly brain, with all of its complex connections, and developed a virtual model of a fly using this brain map.
This virtual fly model uses MuJoCo, an advanced physics simulator to allow the virtual fly to move around a simulated environment, using the inputs given from the mapped fly brain. They examined key behaviors in the virtually modelled fly such as grooming, feeding and fleeing from threats. The company describes this as an early demonstration rather than a finished emulation, but it raises an intriguing question – could brain simulation be extended to far more complex brains, including our own?
