TEHRAN is not the location of this story, and the source does not provide a specific city, so we will proceed with the date, June 2 — Researchers have recreated the entire brain of a fruit fly neuron by neuron and run it inside a simulated body, a step toward what scientists call whole-brain emulation. This breakthrough is significant, as the system is a structural copy of the real biological brain, built from connectomics data and including roughly 125,000 neurons and about 50 million synapses wired as in the living insect.
Virtual sensory signals enter the model, neural activity propagates through the network as it would in a real fly, and the simulated body moves in response. The long-term goal is far more ambitious: applying the same approach to mouse brains, which are orders of magnitude more complex.
If that succeeds, it would mark a major step toward true digital organisms, simulated bodies driven by faithfully reproduced biological neural architecture, while also raising deep questions about where such an organism truly exists.
A key aspect of this research is that it involves a structural copy of the real biological brain, rather than a neural network trained to imitate a fly. This distinction is crucial, as it allows for a more accurate representation of the brain’s function and behavior, and could potentially lead to significant advances in our understanding of the brain and its many complexities.
As researchers continue to work on this project, they will be looking to apply the same approach to more complex brains, such as those of mice, and eventually, perhaps, even humans. This raises a multitude of questions about the potential applications and implications of such technology, and what it could mean for the future of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and beyond. For now, the focus is on the fruit fly brain, and the possibilities that this research has opened up, but it will be exciting to watch as this technology continues to evolve and improve in the coming months and years.
