Scientists Mapped a Fruit Fly Brain. Then Came Doom

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Oct 3, 2026 · 9m

A fruit fly brain map took years to make. Then the internet turned it into videos of a fly playing Doom and solving a Rubik’s Cube. Dr. Samantha Yammine helps you see the achievement behind the joke, and what those videos actually show.

Researchers mapped 167,000 neurons in a male fruit fly brain, with AI helping to trace connections and 29 people checking its work over three years. That painstaking map is the discovery. The games came afterward, and it was the best of the internet, when others used the map in simulations.

So does knowing every connection tell us what a fly will do?…