\u201cFor decades, whole-brain emulation has been the tantalizing counterpart to artificial intelligence,\u201d Weissner-Gross wrote in a Substack post<\/a>. \u201cCopy a biological brain, neuron by neuron and synapse by synapse, and run it.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t \n\t\t\t\tThe First Multi-Behavior Brain Upload\t\t\t<\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple demonstration with larger implications, according to its creators.<\/p>\n Weissner-Gross claimed the video demonstrates what the company believes is the \u201cworld\u2019s first embodiment of a whole-brain emulation that produces multiple behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n The experiment builds on research by Eon senior scientist Philip Shiu and his colleagues, which was published in the journal Nature<\/a> in 2024. At the time, the researchers said they had created a complete computational model of the entire fruit fly brain to \u201cstudy circuit properties of feeding and grooming behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n The team used the pre-existing FlyWire connectome<\/a>, a Princeton-led effort to create a complete wiring diagram of a fruit fly brain.<\/p>\n For their research, they found that their computational model predicted the motor behavior of the simulated fly with a 95 percent accuracy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe show that activation of sugar-sensing or water-sensing gustatory neurons in the computational model accurately predicts neurons that respond to tastes and are required for feeding initiation,\u201d the paper reads.<\/p>\n Now, scientists at Eon Systems have put the pieces together, providing the disembodied brain with \u201csomewhere to go,\u201d per Weissner-Gross.<\/p>\n By leveraging an embodied simulation framework, dubbed NeuroMechFly v2<\/a> and developed by neuroengineers at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne, the team integrated \u201cEon\u2019s connectome-based brain emulation with a physics-simulated fly body.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe result: multiple distinct behaviors driven by the emulated brain\u2019s own circuit dynamics,\u201d Weissner-Gross wrote. \u201cSensory input flows in, neural activity propagates through the complete connectome, motor commands flow out, and a physically simulated body executes the output, closing the loop from perception to action for the first time in a whole-brain emulation.\u201d<\/p>\n Weissner-Gross claims the experiment meaningfully builds on prior research, such as a 2025 paper<\/a> published by a team of DeepMind researchers, who modeled the neural pathways of a fruit fly using \u201creinforcement learning, not connectome-derived neural dynamics, to control a simulated body.\u201d<\/p>\n Eon Systems is now hoping to push the idea even further by first aiming to complete a \u201cdigital emulation of a mouse brain\u201d \u2014 and eventually \u201chuman-scale emulation.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a somewhat terrifying thought: having a virtual human brain take its first steps, vaguely reminiscent of reinforcement learning techniques allowing stick figures to learn how to walk<\/a>, from an awkward crawl to a far more adept running style.<\/p>\n Heck, could we be far more sophisticated versions of Eon Systems\u2019 fruit fly crawling around in a much, much larger sandbox, a paradox that has had physicists intrigued for decades<\/a>?<\/p>\n But to get to that point \u2014 if it\u2019s even a possibility to begin with \u2014 the company has tons of work to do. Even a mouse brain has over 500 times the number of neurons as a fruit fly\u2019s, making an endeavor to analyze sensory inputs, simulate neural activity, and send motor commands to the many parts of the human body exceedingly challenging.<\/p>\n The degree of difficulty doesn\u2019t appear to have Weissner-Gross worried, though.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a fly brain can now close the sensorimotor loop in simulation, the question for the mouse becomes one of scale, not of kind,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cWatch the video closely,\u201d Weissner-Gross added. \u201cWhat you are seeing is not an animation. It is not a reinforcement learning policy mimicking biology. It is a copy of a biological brain, wired neuron-to-neuron from electron microscopy data, running in simulation, making a body move.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe ghost is no longer in the machine,\u201d he concluded. \u201cThe machine is becoming the ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773616209_690_hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
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