World First! "Cyber Fly" Acts Autonomously with a Simulated Brain – How Far Are We from Replicating the Human Brain?
Release time:
2026-04-02
On screen, a virtual fruit fly moves slightly clumsily yet realistically, foraging and grooming itself. It has no script, no AI training – what drives it is a real fruit fly brain, replicated 1:1 into a computer. A recent video released by Silicon Valley startup Eon Systems has sparked intense discussion in the tech world: Does this mean that "mind uploading," once confined to science fiction, is no longer far off?
From "Digital Ghost" to Autonomous Action
The core breakthrough lies in achieving a closed loop of "perception – decision – action." As early as 2018, the scientific community released cryo-electron microscopy data of the fruit fly brain. In 2024, Philip Shiu, now Chief Scientist at Eon, published a "digital fruit fly brain" in Nature containing 125,000 neurons and 50 million synapses – but at the time, it was an immobile "digital ghost." Now, the research team has given it an electronic body. Xu Chun, a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, explains that the key technical highlight is that it does not rely on AI algorithms for fitting; instead, it constructs a neural network highly faithful to biology. The signals from the digital brain directly drive virtual muscle contractions, enabling autonomous decision-making.
The Catch Behind the "Perfect Closed Loop"
However, this "black technology" is not without flaws. Qi Peng, a professor at Tongji University, points out that the work only scanned the brain, not the body. This means there is a missing pathway from the brain to the motor neurons controlling muscles, so the team had to artificially map connections based on known patterns. As a result, the so-called "closed loop" still falls short of true physiological mechanisms.
Replicating the Human Brain Remains a Daunting Challenge
So, does this mean replicating the human brain is just around the corner? Experts urge caution. "Just in terms of numbers alone, the gap is enormous," says Xu Chun. He does the math: the fruit fly brain has about 125,000 neurons; the mouse brain is 560 times larger (about 70 million); and the human brain has a staggering 86 billion neurons. Reconstructing the human brain with the same level of precision would require astronomical effort and funding – "it would be very difficult to accomplish in at least a decade."
A New Paradigm for Intelligence Research
While still far from "digital immortality," the significance is undeniable. This marks a new paradigm distinct from traditional AI – building brain models based on connectomics. In 2011, the international project OpenWorm simulated just 302 neurons of a roundworm; now, we have crossed the threshold to 125,000 neurons in a fruit fly.
"This is not just about building robots, but also about treating diseases," Xu Chun reveals. His team is using such digital models to compare differences between diseased and healthy brain connections, precisely locating neural circuit abnormalities. This will greatly accelerate drug development for brain disorders like Alzheimer's disease. In the future, humanoid robots with biological intelligence may well originate from the first steps taken by this "Cyber Fly."
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