# TheFlyBrain

> TheFlyBrain (theflybrain.com) is a 3D fruit fly whose rendered vision feeds a spiking model of the complete male fruit fly central nervous system, the MaleCNS v1.0 connectome, and a public registry of the 68 fly brain experiments it has been put through: Masonic and religious rituals, films, theme-park rides, historical experiments, altered states and laboratory assays.

- Subject: a 3D fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) named Specimen 237, usually called "the fly".
- Body: NeuroMechFly v2, derived from micro-CT scans of a female fruit fly, with 69 articulated segments (Wang-Chen et al., Nature Methods, 2024).
- Nervous system: the MaleCNS v1.0 connectome from FlyEM at HHMI Janelia (CC BY 4.0): 166,700 neurons and 25,582,938 directed connections of a male fruit fly. Body and nervous system are not anatomically registered.
- Neural model: flybrain 0.1.0, leaky integrate-and-fire units in 20 ms steps with fixed weights. The model does not learn.
- Vision: each scene is rendered from the fly's own head and delivered as retinal input on a 32-column pathway. Display settings never change what the fly sees.
- Measurement: on the workstation, spikes are produced by the model and recorded, not drawn; they come from a model of the wiring diagram, not from a living fly. Browser previews on this site use a simulated neural panel.
- Registry: 68 experiments in six topics. 7 run in a web browser at https://theflybrain.com/try/.
- Workstation: the full source code is included with Research Associate on Patreon ($10 a month): https://www.patreon.com/cw/ParanoidAmerican/membership. Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
- Commission an experiment: $237, guaranteed, delivered as a 1–4 minute recording within 14 days: https://paranoidamerican.com/products/custom-fly-brain-experiment
- Sponsor an experiment: from $1,000; the fly tests a product or service, or a brand appears in an experiment, disclosed as paid: https://paranoidamerican.com/products/custom-fly-brain-experiment-sponsored
- Publisher: TheFlyBrain, a division of Paranoid American Labs (https://paranoidamerican.com).

## Topics

- [Rituals & ceremonies](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rituals-and-ceremonies/): Masonic degrees, religious services and ceremonial workings, with a fruit fly as the participant. (11 experiments)
- [Film & media](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/film-and-media/): Rooms and sets modeled on films and filmed events, seen through a fruit fly’s eyes. (13 experiments)
- [Rides & exploration](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rides-and-exploration/): Theme-park rides, real planetary terrain and expeditions, at fly scale. (9 experiments)
- [History & training](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/history-and-training/): Historical experiments, events and training scenarios, rebuilt around a fruit fly. (11 experiments)
- [Altered states](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/altered-states/): Visual environments built around reported altered states, delivered to a fruit fly’s eyes. (7 experiments)
- [Labs & senses](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/labs-and-senses/): Classic Drosophila assays and a bench for every sense. (17 experiments)

## Experiments

- [Media Observation](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/movie/): The fly watches a film on a television, works at a research computer and pins timestamped frame evidence and red string to a corkboard when a measured neural response crosses a set threshold.
- [Synthetic Analprint Assay](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/surface/): The fly is moved through six prescribed viewpoints over an enlarged procedural radial-fold surface. Its downstream neural responses are classified by an external nearest-centroid readout to test synthetic surface discrimination.
- [Retinal Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/vision-lab/): The fly faces a calibration display of bars, looming discs, gratings, half-fields or uniform white and black. The 32-column retinal input actually delivered is compared with direct drive of LC4/LPLC2 and LC10a.
- [Odor Room](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/odor-lab/): The fly is placed or flown beside four labeled specimens: ripe fruit, microbial substrate, waste and decay. Supplied odor-proxy concentrations are compared with recorded receptor and relay responses.
- [Taste and Feeding Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/taste-lab/): A probe contacts annotated labellar or taste-peg afferents of the fly and proboscis motor output (MN9) is measured. MN9 can also be driven directly as an actuator check.
- [Antennal Mechanics Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/antenna-lab/): Slow auditory envelopes or wind displacement are applied to annotated antennal afferents of the fly, and downstream responses are measured against a disconnected control.
- [Touch and Grooming Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/touch-lab/): A contact probe delivers tactile pulses to the fly's bristle and thoracic afferents, and the response is compared with direct stimulation of anterior and abdominal grooming command populations.
- [Proprioception Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/proprio-lab/): A controlled joint-motion or load proxy is applied to the fly's chordotonal and campaniform afferents, and responses are measured in annotated proprioceptive and motor populations.
- [Temperature Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/thermal-lab/): Normalized warming and cooling inputs are delivered to the fly's identified VP2 and VP3 thermosensory pathways, and the two channels are compared against disconnected controls.
- [Humidity Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/humidity-lab/): Dry-air and moist-air inputs are delivered separately to the fly's VP4 and VP5 hygrosensory channels, and each response is measured against a disconnected control.
- [Motor Circuits Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/motor-lab/): Identified command populations in the fly's connectome (steering, escape, forward and backward walking, halting, freezing, grooming and proboscis output) are stimulated directly and downstream propagation is measured.
- [Navigation and Memory Bench](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/navigation-lab/): Heading, goal-to-steering and reinforcement populations in the fly's connectome are pulsed directly inside a ring of twelve posts, and recovery after each pulse measures transient persistence.
- [Dealey Plaza Moving-Target Diorama](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/depository/): The fly occupies the exposed sixth-floor book room of a miniature depository with a scoped rifle while an empty open-top limousine travels the plaza road at the documented 11.2 mph average.
- [Boeing 767-200ER and Twin Towers Reconstruction](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/airliner/): The fly sits at the controls of a procedural Boeing 767-200ER flight deck in a metric reconstruction of the World Trade Center towers; the default pre-programmed approach ends on the North Tower's north face within floors 93–99.
- [Portrait Bust Landing Training](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/pence/): The fly flies a pre-programmed approach and lands on the white hair of a procedural portrait bust of Mike Pence whose face uses his official vice-presidential portrait.
- [Astral Projection](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/astral/): The fly sits upright and cross-legged on a meditation cushion while a programmed rainbow copy of its body floats above it. An external readout trained on retinal responses selects the copy's lateral alignment with a luminous focus.
- [Ruby and Oswald Photograph Reconstruction](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/ruby/): The fly occupies Jack Ruby's position in a non-graphic, all-fly reconstruction of Bob Jackson's published photograph; an external readout of measured neural rates selects the lateral endpoint of a pre-programmed, slowed projectile.
- [Communism Classroom Instruction](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/communism/): The fly sits at a wooden school desk beneath an 1875 portrait of Karl Marx while the chalkboard presents one of three lessons; an external readout is trained to point toward a marked concept.
- [Psychic Driving Tape Room (Subproject 68)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/psychic-driving/): The fly sits in a padded listening chair wearing headphones wired to a reel-to-reel deck, in a period-style tape room that references Ewen Cameron and MKULTRA Subproject 68.
- [Master Mason](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/master-mason/): The fly is the candidate in a Third Degree ceremony of 52 stages following Duncan's 1866 monitor, representing Hiram Abiff in the legend of Hiram Abiff, through the raising and the closing.
- [Auditing Session](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/scientology-audit/): The fly holds two metal electrode cans while an auditor fly poses a selected prompt and watches an E-meter needle across the desk.
- [Eyes Wide Shut: The Masked Ceremony](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/eyes-wide-shut/): The fly, cloaked and masked, enters a crimson-carpeted hall, joins a ring around a red-cloaked officiant, is called forward alone and lowers its mask.
- [The Monolith](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/monolith/): The fly approaches, touches and circles a black monolith beside a watering hole, picks up a bone club, strikes a rival fly and tosses the bone skyward.
- [Fly Dance Class](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/twerk/): The fly attends a dance class in a wood-floor studio, following an instructor through stance, abdomen isolation and bouncing before an eight-count routine and a solo.
- [Cremation of Care](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/cremation-of-care/): The fly joins a torchlit procession in a redwood grove, follows a symbolic Care effigy across a lake by ferry and kindles the pyre at the feet of a large owl sculpture.
- [Slapfighting](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/slapfight/): The fly and an opponent take alternating turns slapping each other across a padded table while a referee and six spectators watch.
- [Dinosaur River Raft Ride](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/dinosaur-river-raft/): The fly rides in the front row of a yellow river raft with five fly passengers past procedural dinosaurs, up a conveyor lift to a Tyrannosaurus at the crest, and down a steep flume to splashdown.
- [Salvia Room Transformation](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/salvia/): The fly rests beside a glass water pipe as the room stretches, unzips along giant seams and opens onto a carnival of rainbow flies and machinery, then closes back to its opening state.
- [K-Hole Descent](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/ketamine/): The fly sits beside a club dance floor, separates from the room and descends through nested rings and door frames into a dark void of floating room fragments before rising back to the club.
- [LSD Conservatory](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/lsd/): The fly stands in an indoor garden whose leaves breathe and whose floor develops moving contours; the garden unfolds into a mandala while colored silhouettes trail the fly.
- [The Laboratory Set](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/meth-lab/): The fly moves through a modeled laboratory film set among decorative glassware and rendered vapor, ending with a cut to a tray of premade blue crystal props.
- [Sunday Mass (Roman Rite)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/catholic-mass/): The fly attends a condensed Sunday Mass in Ordinary Time as one of 24 fly parishioners, following U.S. postures and receiving Communion individually from the priest.
- [Red Laser DMT](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/dmt-laser/): The fly watches a red laser projection on a wall as the room melts into a jeweled tunnel, twelve holographic fly figures present geometric jewels, and the room reassembles to its opening state.
- [Boat Ride of Nations](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/boat-ride-of-nations/): The fly rides a boat through the flooded show rooms of a Florida theme-park boat ride, past 289 costumed fly figures arranged by world region, ending in a white-and-gold finale.
- [Seven-Inversion Launch Coaster](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/launch-coaster/): The fly rides in the front row of an eight-car, four-abreast train on a reference-based model of a launched coaster in Orlando, through an inclined launch tunnel and seven inversions.
- [Mars HiRISE Terrain Survey](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/mars-hirise/): The fly, enlarged to tens of metres, walks a looping five-stop survey route across Martian terrain built from published HiRISE stereo elevation models and aligned orthoimages.
- [Seed of Life Sequence](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/seed-of-life/): The fly watches seven intersecting circles become a ten-point Tree of Life, then thirteen centers joined by 78 connections, which lift into depth and rotate with accelerating speed.
- [Little Saint James Pavilion Expedition](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/epstein-island/): The fly and five other flies arrive by motorboat at a reference-based reconstruction of the striped pavilion on Little Saint James and enter it. The model also includes an underground room with 24 rendered camera feeds; this room is not documented in the cited sources.
- [Dee and Kelley: Scrying Uriel](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/dee-uriel/): The fly, as Edward Kelley, watches the framed stone at John Dee's Holy Table while a second fly as Dee questions and records, until Uriel, then a chair and table, appear inside the stone.
- [The Abramelin Operation](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/abramelin/): The fly, as aspirant, undertakes a condensed six-month Abramelin operation in a domestic oratory, from preparation and increasing prayer to the guardian and exterior convocations.
- [The Babalon Working](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/babalon-working/): The fly, as Jack Parsons, follows Parsons's 1946 record of the Babalon Working across Pasadena and the Mojave, with two further flies as L. Ron Hubbard (scribe) and Marjorie Cameron.
- [The 31st Degree](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/degree-31/): The fly occupies the candidate's role in a complete presentation of a supplied Thirty-first Degree ritual text, from the cave prelude through four Egyptian altars, the weighing, judgment and investiture to the return to the cave.
- [Goat Laboratory Concentration Trial](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/goat-lab/): The fly holds both forelegs to its head in a period military test room while a goat shakes, heats, smokes and, at 30 seconds, ruptures into 128 fragments.
- [Salt Lake Temple Endowment (c. 1912)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/salt-lake-temple/): The fly takes the candidate's role in a circa-1912 historical endowment visit, moving from preparation and initiatory rites through the live presentation, prayer circle and veil to the Celestial Room.
- [Torture Chamber: Six Documented Devices](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/torture-chamber/): The fly tours a vaulted stone chamber and is placed at six documented early-modern devices in turn, while optional bounded direct stimulation and paired dose sweeps measure the fixed connectome model's response.
- [Skull and Bones: Connubial Bliss](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/skull-and-bones/): The fly lies supine in an open, velvet-lined coffin while ten cloaked fly members stand around it, in a 45-second pre-programmed sequence beneath a white fly-head emblem and the number 322.
- [Nutty Putty Cave Entrapment (2009)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/nutty-putty/): In a fly-scale limestone passage, the fly crawls through a left-hand bend and descends head-first into a steep squeeze, where it becomes wedged; two rescuer flies reach it and attempt a short haul.
- [Philadelphia Experiment Legend Model](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/philadelphia-experiment/): In a model of the legend, the fly stands aboard a destroyer escort as experimental coils energize, a green field closes around the ship, and the vessel disappears, rematerializes in another harbor and returns with crew embedded in its steel.
- [Apollo Landing (Studio Reveal)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/apollo-studio/): The fly descends a lunar module ladder, sets a flag and collects a sample. Zooming out reveals a director and camera crew beyond the edge of the set; they are included in the model without a documented source.
- [Double-Slit Detector](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/double-slit/): The fly stands beside a two-slit apparatus. Rotating the fly to face the apparatus enables a programmed which-path detector; turning it away disables the detector and restores the interference pattern.
- [The Shining: Six Scenes](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/shining-medley/): The fly and supporting flies move through six silent Overlook scenes, from a tricycle ride through the patterned corridor to the Gold Room bar.
- [Chocolate River Boat Tunnel (1971)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/chocolate-river-tunnel/): The fly boards a pink paddle boat in a confectionery garden, travels down a chocolate river and passes through a dark tunnel of projected eyes, crawling silhouettes and spirals before arriving at a calm landing.
- [The Ludovico Technique](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/ludovico/): The fly is seated in a restraint chair facing a projection screen that plays any selected YouTube video or locally prepared film. Each screened frame reaches the connectome model as 32 luminance columns.
- [The War Room](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/war-room/): The fly sits at the War Room's round table as an aide, then becomes the B-52 commander who rides the released bomb toward a snowfield, in a procedural model of the sets of Dr. Strangelove (1964) populated entirely by flies.
- [The Impossible Overlook](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/overlook-floorplan/): The fly walks a joined procedural model of the sets of The Shining (1980) to inspect ten documented spatial contradictions and continuity changes, then links them on a corkboard with red string.
- [The Star Gate](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/stargate-corridor/): The fly rides a small white pod through slit-scan light planes, nebulae and false-colour landscapes into a lit-floor bedroom while horizontal-motion, vertical-motion and looming populations are measured.
- [Alien Autopsy (1995)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/alien-autopsy/): The fly films a purported "1947" autopsy reel of a draped cast figure; the camera then pulls back to reveal the 1995 plywood set built inside a London flat.
- [The Vault of the Adepti](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/vault-adepti/): The fly occupies the aspirant's role in the Adeptus Minor grade ceremony in the seven-sided Vault of Christian Rosenkreutz, following the three Points of the Stella Matutina ritual published by Israel Regardie.
- [Haunted Estate Dark Ride](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/haunted-estate/): The fly walks through a candlelit foyer and a stretching room, then boards a continuously moving clamshell vehicle on a theme-park dark ride, passing a Pepper's ghost ballroom illusion, an attic, a graveyard and a mirror crypt.
- [Apollo Landing Site Terrain Survey](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/apollo-site-lroc/): The fly, enlarged to about 7 m, traverses stereo-derived Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter terrain at Apollo landing sites, stopping at published positions of the lunar module, surface experiments and nearby craters.
- [Project Pigeon Nose-Cone Guidance](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/project-pigeon/): In a counterfactual substitution, the fly takes the pigeon's place in the nose cone of a guided glide vehicle; in closed-loop mode its measured DNa02 right-minus-left firing rate turns the vehicle toward a projected target ship.
- [Obedience Study Reconstruction (Milgram, 1963)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/milgram/): The fly serves as the teacher in a fly-based reconstruction of Stanley Milgram's 1961–62 Yale obedience experiments, reading word pairs and pressing switches on a simulated shock generator while an experimenter fly gives the four standardized prods.
- [Flight Simulator](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/flight-simulator/): The fly is tethered to a torque meter inside a cylindrical panorama of four T patterns. In closed loop, its measured DNa02 right-minus-left rate turns the panorama while heat is paired with one pattern type.
- [T-Maze Odor Conditioning](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/t-maze/): The fly undergoes a condensed Tully & Quinn odor-shock protocol: one odor paired with twelve shocks, a second odor unpaired, then a choice between two arms selected by a documented rule applied to measured readouts.
- [Courtship Chamber](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/courtship-chamber/): The fly is assigned the male role because the retained connectome is a male CNS. It executes a pre-programmed courtship ethogram toward a female in a 10 mm chamber while LC10a, pC1, pIP10 and DNa02 rates are measured.
- [Looming Escape (Fly Swatter)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/fly-swatter/): The fly feeds on spilled sugar on a kitchen counter while four swats approach at constant velocity. In closed loop, a measured DNp01 giant-fiber spike before contact triggers a pre-programmed takeoff.
- [Ganzfeld Protocol](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/ganzfeld/): The fly, as receiver, sits under red light with fly-scaled halved ping-pong balls over its eyes while a sender fly views a seeded target picture in another room. A pick among four candidates is then recorded.
- [Dreamachine](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/dreamachine/): The fly sits facing a slotted cylinder that turns on a record turntable around a bare bulb in a modeled 1960s Paris hotel room. The slot flicker reaches its retina as frames rendered 20 ms apart.

## Pages

- [Home](https://theflybrain.com/): overview of the fly, its brain and the registry
- [Try It](https://theflybrain.com/try/): experiments that run in the browser
- [Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/): the fly's body, nervous system and model
- [Questions and answers](https://theflybrain.com/faq/): what is real, what is measured, how to take part
- [Methods and credits](https://theflybrain.com/methods/): how the simulation works; datasets and licenses
- [The Workstation](https://theflybrain.com/workstation/): the software, its specs and everything it is built on
- [Setup guide](https://theflybrain.com/workstation/setup/): installing the workstation on macOS, Windows and Linux
- [Suggestions](https://theflybrain.com/suggestions/): suggest, commission or sponsor an experiment

## Optional

- [Full text of every experiment](https://theflybrain.com/llms-full.txt)
- [Machine-readable catalog (JSON)](https://theflybrain.com/experiments.json)
- [Atom feed of experiments](https://theflybrain.com/feed.xml)