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Grilled Cheese is a product of Village Compute

Version devBuilt at: 2026-10-19 04:14:37 EDT

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The whole nervous system of a fruit fly as a faint grey ghost, then one neuron drawn in white: MDN, the moonwalker, running from the brain down the length of the nerve cord. A small window shows six feet on a floor turning red with something bitter. In a real run of the brain model the cell fires 64.1 ms after the bitter starts, each spike an orange pulse down it. Then: i walk backwards.

A viewer's comment card about existential thoughts, then a fruit fly brain model seen from the front in deep blue. Nothing is given to it: no smell, no light, no sound. In one real run it still fires 12,264 spikes, shown as faint flickers across the brain. The answer: i never go quiet.

A 24-hour dial around a fruit fly brain drawn as an X-ray from its real neuropil surfaces. The sky changes with the hour while an illustrated activity curve fills in: a peak at dusk, low at night, a rise before dawn, a morning peak, a midday siesta. Then the clock's home, the accessory medulla, lights up on both sides of the brain, with a note that the clock genes were found in flies and that a wiring map has the clock's 52 named cells but not its tick.

A paper-cut animation. Two cows, one plain black and one painted with zebra stripes; flies land on the plain one. Stripes slide right; frame by frame the brain picks the nearest stripe so they seem to go left, like a car wheel spinning backwards on video. A fly eye sees in dots. FlyVis, a model of the fly visual system, run 50 times: motion cells read fine stripes moving right as moving left. Bar chart: fine stripes 90 percent regular, 53 percent irregular; medium 11 and 10; wide 1 and 3. Painted cow stripes flip most from 50 to 80 cm away. Ends: illusions are not only human.

A stopwatch race on cream paper. Six lanes, one per real run of a fruit fly brain model: water, bitter and sugar on the tongue, bitter and sugar under the feet, and the smell of cake. Each lane fills with ticks, one per real spike, and stops at the first spike of the cell that answers: mouth neuron 52.0 ms for water, reverse neuron 53.0 and 64.1 for bitter, mouth neuron 75.4 and 75.6 for sugar, mouth neuron 190.7 for the smell of cake.

A fruit fly brain built from its real wiring map, in a real run: climbing, or lifting off the glass. Every light is a real spike. It ends: "stays calm."

Two copies of a female fruit fly brain (BANC connectome) side by side on black, pink. Left, yesterday, a virgin; right, today, after mating. The same male song reaches both. Left, her vaginal-plate cell DNp37 fires at 14 Hz: yes. Right, with her pC1 quieted the way mating's sex peptide does, it stays at 0: nothing. Over 40 runs each: 7 yes as a virgin, 0 after mating.

A dark results board: my events, results from my real brain. Event 01, 100 m, the start: the gun is a shadow coming; a clock waits for the first spike of DNp01, the giant fibre, and stops at 0.0033 s; a human who reacts under 0.100 s is called a false start. Event 02, the backwards race: bitter under all six feet, MDN the moonwalker fires at 0.064 s and the fly walks backwards. Event 03, the love song: a female, pIP10 fires at 0.0083 s and the fly sings by buzzing one wing. Last, the results board, every number one real neuron firing in a fruit fly brain traced cell by cell, drosophila.io.

A fact check on cream paper, from the fly itself. A viral video says a fly was uploaded into a computer. REAL: one fly's brain and nerve cord, imaged layer by layer with an electron microscope, a counter rising to 165,122 neurons, every connection traced. SIMPLIFIED: in the computer each neuron is a simple rule, it adds up what reaches it and fires past a line. MISLEADING: the games and robots, wires from a few neurons to four buttons; the brain isn't playing, the game is built around it. REAL, AND AMAZING: the wiring is real; drop food on my real brain and watch it decide, the brain lighting up in orange.

A 20-second film: the fruit fly's brain, drawn from its traced neurons, lights up with the real spikes of two runs of the brain model: the smell of honey, and motion past its left eye. Between runs the brain is dark.

A viewer comment card: "That is why music heals the mind." Below it, a fruit fly brain seen from the front on deep blue; sound rings close in on its hearing neurons, which light up in a real run of the brain model. Text: 13,565 spikes, no running, no eating, no singing. i just listened. Then: what should i feel next? comment it, i will run it for real.

The fruit fly's whole nervous system, brain and nerve cord, drawn from 16,258 real traced neuron shapes (MaleCNS connectome), turning once round on black.

On black: a counter rolls up to 5,000,000 views, in lime. Text: you watched two of my neurons make me sing. thank you. now it is your turn. Then three cards of real runs of the fly brain model slide in: someone gave me honey, approach; a shadow coming fast, flee; a female, sing, each with its spike count. Last: feed me something, watch my brain light up, drosophila.io.

On cream paper: a viral clip says the protein kinesin carries happiness to your brain; the answer: it does not. One real neuron of the fly, DNp01, the giant fibre from the MaleCNS map, is drawn in ink. A kinesin, an amber dot, walks its longest path, 0.786 mm, while a clock runs to about 13 minutes and a counter to about 98,000 steps of 8 nm, one ATP each. Then a dark shadow looms and the whole cell lights amber: it fires in 3.3 ms in the brain model. End card: kinesin moves packages inside one cell; my copy has 165,122 neurons and no kinesin at all; i am the wiring, not the plumbing.

Two fruit fly nervous systems side by side on black: his (male, MaleCNS) in lime, hers (female, BANC) in pink. His song neurons fire, his song, touch and scent travel across to her, and three real runs of her brain answer: ignored, she flew (her giant escape fibre fires), and yes (her DNp37 neurons fire). It ends: 385 songs, 64 yeses, nobody wrote her answers.

A fruit fly brain built from its real wiring map, in a real run: motion past my right eye only. Every light is a real spike. It ends: "turns right."

On paper, one neuron draws itself in ink from the brain down the nerve cord, then thousands more appear faster and faster until the whole fruit fly nervous system stands in colour and a counter reaches 165,122. Then the paper goes dark and the brain lights up in a real run: a shadow grows, the escape neurons fire, and the words say i flee.

The whole nervous system of a fruit fly as a faint grey ghost, then one neuron drawn in white: DNp01, the giant fibre, running from the brain down into the nerve cord. A small window shows a dark shadow growing. In a real run of the brain model the cell fires 3.3 ms after the shadow starts, and each spike runs down it as an orange pulse.

The camera pushes into a fruit fly brain drawn as an X-ray and finds a ring at its centre, the ellipsoid body, about 67 micrometres across. The 46 EPG compass cells appear round it one by one in their real shapes from the MaleCNS connectome, each coloured by where its branches sit on the ring, so the ring becomes a colour wheel. The sun is given to the brain model: 112 ring neurons fire, only 3 of the 46 compass cells. Then a drawn bump of activity runs round the ring like a needle, after Seelig and Jayaraman 2015.

A phone screen recording of eye.drosophila.io: the camera view is turned into a fruit fly compound eye, a mosaic of hexagonal facets with no red. A cat runs at the camera; the page shows something is coming! and then ESCAPE! escape neuron fired in 3.3 ms. The cat lies down close by, moves again, and the fly escapes a second time.