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DesktopFly
gist
DesktopFly turns a public connectome into an embodied macOS creature. A live 668-neuron leaky-integrate-and-fire circuit, built from roughly 19,000 FlyWire synaptic connections, drives escape, walking, steering, grooming, and backward motion in a transparent desktop overlay. Cursor motion, windows, clicks, typing activity, temperature, and gait feed the circuit, while an interactive brain view exposes and stimulates real neuron positions. The repository clearly separates measured wiring from modeled physiology and sensory transduction.
ideas
- Give scientific data a body. A procedural fly makes connectome activity legible as movement instead of leaving the network as a static graph or numerical trace.
- Let behavior cross a real circuit boundary. Looming input reaches LC4 and LPLC2 cells, feedforward inhibition shapes their response, and a Giant Fiber spike triggers escape.
- Close the environment loop with ordinary signals. Window edges become terrain, cursor velocity becomes looming or wind, clicks become taps, gait becomes proprioception, and thermal state changes speed.
- Make inspection an intervention. The brain window renders 23,210 soma positions and lets a click stimulate nearby simulated neurons so the downstream behavior remains observable.
- Label the model boundary. FlyWire supplies connectivity and synaptic strength, while neuron dynamics, transmitter signs, delays, body geometry, and sensory mappings remain explicit modeling choices.
quotes
“Escape is not scripted.”
“The fly's reaction is whatever the real network does downstream”
“the connectome gives wiring, not physiology.”
“Everything downstream of the sensory neurons — who connects to whom, and how strongly — is FlyWire data.”