Fly Brain
A fruit fly, with its brain on show.
A real brain in a virtual fly
Measured regions, real traced neurons, lighting up live to your camera, your voice and your touch.
Look inside the head of a fruit fly
The brain is built from real measurements: 34 regions in their measured shapes, drawn in over 3,000 points of light, threaded with more than 500 real neurons traced from electron microscope images. Go see-through and watch it light up inside the head. The shapes and the neurons are real; the activity is illustrated, not recorded.
See it respond to your camera feed
Wave a hand in front of the camera and its optic lobes light up, each eye answering its own side. Move something suddenly and it freezes with caution. Push something towards it quickly and it takes fright and tries to escape.
Stand inside the brain as it fires
Tap AR and the fly appears in your room. Pinch it from 5 cm to 20 m long, walk all the way around it, and stand in among the regions as they flare.
Reacts to sound and motion too
Talk, clap or play music and the hearing centre flares, with a pitch hotspot sliding across it and a flash on every beat. Turn your phone and its balance organs light up. Tap a leg and the signal runs up that leg's own nerve.
Dress up your fly with skins
Pick from eight skins, from a glassy ghost to a fat red-eyed housefly, or go fully see-through so nothing is left but the brain and the light in it.
Learn about real neuroanatomy
Open the brain view to see twelve regions named in their real places, from the lamina behind each eye to the mushroom body and the nerve cord. Pinch right in and the lobula plate splits into its four layers.
