Researcher Tests Fruit Fly Brain Simulation With Passive External Memory System

Google Research and collaborators have mapped the male fruit fly nervous system, comprising roughly 166,700 neurons and 125 million synaptic connections, and a separate project called DOOMFLY wired this biological diagram to the video game Doom in software. Inspired by these developments, a developer explored what would happen if a simulated brain were given external memory that it never actively queries. Rather than using conventional AI memory — where agents explicitly save and retrieve information — the experiment used a system called Mycelium, where memory modulates neural states passively, making certain responses easier or harder to trigger without directly dictating actions. The developer ran tests on a small recurrent network, including resetting the brain and transplanting memory between otherwise identical systems, to measure how much behavioral identity persists. A follow-up post is planned with the full code, controls, and results.