u/gunshotacry

Researchers mapped the fruit fly brain in extraordinary detail, identifying roughly 140,000 neurons and more than 50 million connections between them.

Using this biological wiring map, researchers can build computational models that attempt to reproduce aspects of how neural signals travel through the fly’s nervous system. In some experiments, simulated neural networks based on real fly circuitry have even been able to reproduce or predict certain behaviors.

The idea sounds straight out of science fiction: map every neuron, translate those connections into computer code, and then watch a digital nervous system respond inside a virtual environment.

Fruit flies may be tiny, but their brains control vision, navigation, learning, memory, feeding and complex social behaviors mostly with bitches. Understanding how these relatively small neural networks produce behavior could eventually reveal fundamental principles that apply to much larger brains.

However, a digital reconstruction isn’t necessarily a conscious fly “living” inside a computer. What scientists can currently simulate are neural circuits and aspects of their activity—not evidence that the animal’s consciousness or identity has been transferred.

Still, we’re entering an era where biology can increasingly be mapped and reconstructed computationally.

The bigger question is fascinating: if scientists eventually simulate every neuron and connection in a brain perfectly, at what point does a simulation become more than just a simulation?