I held a séance with a dead fly's simulated brain. She told me to text my ex.

Description and use

Fly Séance runs a full fruit‑fly connectome locally, maps questions to sensory offerings, simulates neural activity, and outputs a spoken verdict via a local LLM.

Problem

Developers and students wanted a local, no‑API, interactive way to explore a real fruit‑fly connectome and observe its responses to sensory stimuli.

Outcome

The tool demonstrates that a full fruit‑fly connectome can be simulated locally, that sensory offerings drive distinct motor outputs, and that a local LLM can translate simulation results into human‑readable verdicts.

Workflow

• Ask a yes‑or‑no question
• Gemma turns the question into stimulation rates for four sensory groups and selects an offering
• Run five one‑second trials of the full FlyWire model locally
• Read firing rates of MN9 (feeding) and aBN1 (grooming) to decide yes, no, or groom
• Gemma speaks the verdict based on the offering and firing outcome

Evidence

Fly Séance is a séance you hold with a simulation of that brain. You ask a yes-or-no question.

Source

On my M5 Max with 48 GB of RAM, the five trials run in parallel and a whole séance, both Gemma calls included, took a median of 4.5 seconds.

Source

The wiring diagram of a real fly brain (the FlyWire connectome, 127,400 neurons in the 630 release) is simulated, and the fly's body answers: it reaches for the nectar, it grooms the touch away, or it stays still.

Source