研究人员发布了一幅雄性果蝇(Drosophila)大脑的完整神经连结图谱(connectome),绘制了 166,000 个神经元(特定应用模型中为 165,112 个)以及 125,000,000 个突触连接。这项开源成果推动了微型数位生物智能的模拟,让人工智慧系统能够透过重构真实生物讯号网络来模拟果蝇对外部刺激的动态反应。
《WIRED》的实验专案 PitchFly 将过去一年间数百篇热门新闻标题转换为神经网路表征,使该果蝇连结组得以生成新闻选题。自九月初发布以来,全球开发者已将该连结组应用于诸多领域,包括指导虚拟赛车、解魔术方块,以及游玩《Beat Saber》、《Doom》、《Minecraft》与《Pong》等游戏,例如 Alex Wormuth 打造的 StonkFly 甚至将其用于股票交易决策。
此项成果展示了神经科学与特化人工智慧架构的重大进展。尽管人类大脑包含 86,000,000,000 个神经元,其全脑图谱在现阶段技术上仍无法实现,但果蝇模型的 166,000 个神经元提供了一个具有价值的试验平台,使研究人员能够探讨神经损伤与修复机制,同时证明轻量化专用模型在特定运算任务中具备出色的效率。
Researchers developed a comprehensive connectome of a male drosophila fruit fly brain, mapping 166,000 neurons (165,112 in specialized model implementations) alongside 125,000,000 connecting synapses. This open-sourced biological blueprint facilitates the simulation of miniature biological intelligence, allowing computational models to mirror how biological neural networks fire in response to varied external stimuli.
WIRED utilized this dataset to build PitchFly, which processed hundreds of top headlines from the past year into neural representations to generate editorial ideas. Following the connectome's release in early September, independent developers deployed it across interactive environments, including simulated driving, Rubik's cube solving, and gaming titles such as Beat Saber, Doom, Minecraft, and Pong, while Alex Wormuth constructed StonkFly for financial trading.
These applications highlight advances in both neuroscience research and specialized artificial intelligence design. While mapping all 86,000,000,000 neurons of the human brain remains currently unfeasible, the fruit fly model with 166,000 neurons provides a scalable benchmark for testing neuronal wiring damage and biological computation, proving that compact specialized models can operate effectively without requiring massive foundation architectures.