I connected a fruit fly connectome to tic-tac-toe (with a minimax safety net)
Scientists have mapped the whole nervous system of a fruit fly: every neuron and every connection, in a public database called a connectome. I'm a developer, not a neuroscientist, but I wondered: what if I take a small piece of it and use it to play tic-tac-toe? That became FlyCNS-TicTacToe . How it works Pick some neurons. I took the neurons that send commands out of the fly's brain, plus the…
In a unique experiment, a developer mapped a fruit fly's entire nervous system, known as a connectome, to play tic-tac-toe. The whole process, dubbed FlyCNS-TicTacToe, used real wiring from the fly's brain and three types of neurons: those sending commands out of the fly's brain and the central brain neurons feeding them. By turning the 9 squares of the game into separate groups of neurons, the developer created a simulation where a small signal flow determined the fly's move.
While the fly circuit lacks lookahead, a minimax algorithm was used to list the best moves for each turn. The fly only breaks ties, meaning it has minimal influence over the game. The real components of this experiment were the neurons and their connections derived from the male fruit fly connectome data, with synapse strength representing the real synapse count.
The neurotransmitter prediction—acetylcholine excites, GABA and glutamate calm, and everything else is neutral—was a common rule based on the database's prediction. However, the board, simulation, and chosen neurons were all created by the developer, not part of the fly's natural decision circuit. The code for this project is available on GitHub and is licensed under MIT, while the connectome data itself is shared under a CC-BY license.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
