Written by Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where characters find themselves in strange new worlds after their minds are transferred into robots or digital worlds?
That sounds cool yet scary at the same time, right?
Well, what if I told you that this idea isn’t just for movies anymore? Some scientists have recently uploaded the brain of a tiny fruit fly into a computer.
Yep. You read that right! A fly’s brain was uploaded to a computer, and then it was allowed to control a simulated digital fly body.
Just like in the movies, they explored how this fly brain could move and interact in a new world.
A company called Eon Systems has created a model of a fruit fly’s brain, which has about 125,000 brain cells and 50 million connections.
They placed this model in a virtual space, similar to the world of “The Matrix,” a movie where people live in a computer-generated reality.
Alex Weissner-Gross, one of the cofounders, shared an animation of this fruit fly. In the simulation, the fly stretches its legs, cleans its feet, and even drinks from a little bowl, just like a real fly.
Weissner-Gross explained that people have been dreaming about copying a brain to run it on a computer for a long time. This project is the first time scientists have created a full brain simulation that can show different behaviors.
The team built on the work of another scientist, Philip Shiu, who created a detailed model of a fruit fly brain to study how it behaves when eating and cleaning itself.
Now, with special technology called NeuroMechFly v2, the fly’s brain can send signals to its digital body, making it move based on what it “thinks.”
Weissner-Gross is excited about what’s next. The scientists hope to create a digital version of a mouse brain and, maybe one day, even a human brain.
However, a mouse brain has way more brain cells, which is over 500 times more, so they have a big challenge ahead of them.
Despite this, Weissner-Gross feels confident. He thinks that if they can make a fruit fly brain work, they can figure out how to make a mouse brain work, too.
“Watch the video closely,” he said, “because this isn’t just an animation. It’s a real copy of a biological brain making a body move.”
In his words, “The ghost isn’t just in the machine anymore; the machine is becoming the ghost.”
Would you ever want your brain uploaded to a computer? Do you think you would be the same person? Comment below with your thoughts.
