Petteri Pyyny
13 Sep 2026 14:23
Google's researchers succeeded at the beginning of September in creating a complete 3D model of the brain of a common adult, male fruit fly.
It was the first time that the entire brain structure of a reasonably complex animal was digitized into a 3D model containing over 166,000 neurons. The achievement is considered a significant milestone for brain research and is hoped to help researchers understand brain function more precisely.
But because humans are, after all, humans, such a fine scientific achievement was also harnessed for a rather perplexing use.
A few days later, programmer Alex Wormuth announced on social media (link leads to X/Twitter) that he had taken the fruit fly brain model created by Google and taught it to play Doom.
Because why not.
Wormuth states that the teaching process was based on brain stimulation, where each game frame (frame) is sent to the fruit fly's brain neurons that process external stimuli. The subsequent brain activity is then returned to Doom for character control. Correspondingly, whenever enemies are successfully damaged in the game, a reward-indicating stimulus is fed to the brain, stimulating its dopamine-sensitive cells.
The fruit fly's Doom gameplay can also be followed in real-time on Wormuth's website.
According to many commentators, the case of the Doom-playing fruit fly is a classic Torment Nexus example.