---
title: "Connectome Paddle Game · Fly Brain Experiment · TheFlyBrain"
url: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/connectome-paddle-game/
description: "The fly plays a single-paddle arcade ball game on a rendered CRT, modeled on the DishBrain experiment in which cultured neurons played Pong."
language: en
---

# Connectome Paddle Game

The fly plays a single-paddle arcade ball game on a rendered CRT, modeled on the DishBrain experiment in which cultured neurons played Pong. In closed loop, a measured right-minus-left firing rate (DNa02 by default) sets the paddle's velocity, scored against random and motionless paddles on the same serves.

**An eight-second loop from the workstation. Full recording pending publication.** [Follow along](#recordings) for the release.

## What the fly saw

Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment.

![Eye-camera frame at 0:15](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-0.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 0:15](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-0-retina.png)

0:15 Game 1 / slow serves

![Eye-camera frame at 0:40](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-1.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 0:40](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-1-retina.png)

0:40 Game 2 / faster serves

![Eye-camera frame at 1:06](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-2.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 1:06](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-2-retina.png)

1:06 Game 2 / faster serves

![Eye-camera frame at 1:31](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-3.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 1:31](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/fly-pong-3-retina.png)

1:31 Game 3 / fast serves

## Timeline

5 steps, with their times in the experiment

1.  0:00
    
    **Insert coin / attract mode**
    
2.  0:08
    
    **Game 1 / slow serves**
    
3.  0:38
    
    **Game 2 / faster serves**
    
    Ten faster serves. Hits and misses are scored only at the paddle line; the random and motionless paddles are scored on exactly the same balls.
    
4.  1:08
    
    **Game 3 / fast serves**
    
    Ten fast serves. The DishBrain-style feedback flashes after hits and fills the screen with static after misses. The weights stay fixed.
    
5.  1:32
    
    **Final score / measured vs baselines**
    
    The scoreboard compares the measured paddle with the random and motionless paddles on the same serves, with a 95% binomial interval. No learning: fixed weights.
    

## Setup

-   Five cues over 102 s: attract mode (8 s), three games of 8 slow, 10 faster and 10 fast serves, and a final score.
-   The fly faces the screen of a procedural 1970s-style cabinet, with its head at the eye camera; the 4.4 × 3.3 tube fills about 80° × 64° of its eye image.
-   The court is turned 90°: the paddle moves left and right along the bottom of the screen, the axis the 32-column retina resolves, and the far wall replaces the opponent.
-   Feedback follows the DishBrain protocol: a regular full-screen flash after a hit and 0.8 s of random static in eight vertical bands after a miss; Silent (a blank pause) and Off are the controls.
-   A fly-scale podium sits in front of the fly's chest, outside its eye image: pre-programmed foreleg motion drops a coin, presses START and rides the knob as it turns with the paddle, but never sets the paddle.
-   Cameras: Arcade / fly at the controls, Screen / over the shoulder, Fly / antennae in the glow, Controls / coin, start and knob, Fly POV / the tube, Scoreboard / measured trace, Cabinet / side profile.

## Measurement

-   Retinal-only input: each 200 ms live window carries ten 20 ms frames of the screen, so the ball and paddle reach the model only as luminance; measured readouts are [DNa02](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/dna02/), HS + H2 and [LC10a](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lc10a/).
-   Closed loop: paddle velocity = gain × filtered right-minus-left rate of the chosen readout, integrated once per measured window; the paddle moves only when a window ends, and the scene clock waits for measured coverage during the games.
-   Open loop is a pre-programmed tracker that always meets the ball, and the random paddle is a seeded path that ignores it; neither is a measurement.
-   Every paddle plays the same 28 seeded serves; in closed loop only crossings reached by contiguous measured coverage are scored, and the scoreboard gives hits, a 95% Wilson interval and a verdict against the random and motionless paddles.

## Limitations

-   Neural weights are fixed, so nothing can learn: the flash and static are a stimulus protocol only, and every score describes a fixed network's response to luminance.
-   The paper's 100 Hz hit flash cannot be represented at a 20 ms model step, and its 4 s miss stimulus is condensed to 0.8 s.
-   In live runs on 16 October 2026, DNa02 was mostly silent (31 of 208 windows non-zero, as single 5 Hz cells with a left bias), so the steering paddle drifted to the left wall: 1/9 hits, against 1/9 for the random paddle and 2/9 for the motionless one.
-   HS + H2 gave a random walk across the court (1/5 hits) and LC10a 2/5; at these sample sizes none differs from the baselines.
-   About three measured windows arrived per second of wall time, so the time-locked games ran at roughly half speed.

## Sources

-   [Kagan et al. (2022), In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world, Neuron](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.09.001)
-   [Kagan et al. (2022), open-access full text (PMC)](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9747182/)

## About

The fly plays a single-paddle arcade ball game on a rendered CRT, modeled on the DishBrain experiment in which cultured neurons played Pong. In closed loop, a measured right-minus-left firing rate (DNa02 by default) sets the paddle's velocity, scored against random and motionless paddles on the same serves.

[theflybrain.com/experiments/connectome-paddle-game](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/connectome-paddle-game/)

[labs-and-senses](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/labs-and-senses/) [drosophila](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [connectome](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [malecns](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [specimen-237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/)

-   Subject [Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/)
-   Readme
-   MaleCNS data · CC BY 4.0
-   Views not yet tallied
-   Duration **102 s**
-   Serves **28 (8 slow, 10 faster, 10 fast)**
-   Live window **200 ms (10 × 20 ms frames)**
-   Weights **Fixed; no learning**

## Recordings

No recordings published yet.

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## Packages

[workstation source](https://www.patreon.com/cw/ParanoidAmerican/membership)Included for Research Associates · [setup guide](https://theflybrain.com/workstation/setup/)

## Credits 2

[![Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/images/specimen-237.jpg)](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) [PA](https://paranoidamerican.com)

Official Experiment

## Notes

-   Setup35%
-   Measurement24%
-   Limitations29%
-   Sources12%

## Neurons

-   [LC10a](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/lc10a/)
-   [DNa02](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/dna02/)

[All neuron pages](https://theflybrain.com/neurons/)

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## More in Labs & senses

[All 19](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/labs-and-senses/)

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---
Source: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/connectome-paddle-game/ · TheFlyBrain (theflybrain.com) · Site summary for language models: https://theflybrain.com/llms.txt