Neuroscience × browser games 🧠 Can you beat 166,700 biological neurons? Built on the MaleCNS fruit-fly connectome.
Joined September 2026
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Human vs Brain is live. 🪰🧠
Can you beat 166,700 biological neurons?
First game and first brain is out.
10 rounds. 900 ms to react.
You race a computational model constrained by the mapped MaleCNS connectome of an adult fruit fly.
Play → humanvsbrain.com
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Two new studies published yesterday suggest that the actual wiring of fruit-fly brains can outperform randomized neural networks.
One even tested mathematical and language tasks using MaleCNS.
But does biological wiring really matter?
Can it someday replace artificial connections?
We’re building an experiment to find out.
🧠 humanvsbrain.com
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HOLY S*HT!
Humanity is losing to a dead fly's brain.
How crazy is that?
I wonder how we'll do when game 2 is out.
We're gonna get SWARMED!
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Two flies can start with the same neural wiring and still end up behaving differently.
Different inputs → different internal state → different decisions.
That’s the bit I’m most interested in building toward.
Same connectome. Diverging experience.
Humanvsbrain.com
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Did you know a fruit fly doesn’t need to “see” the way we do to react to something approaching?
Specialized visual neurons detect features like small moving objects and send that information deeper into the nervous system, where it can help drive a rapid behavioral response.
Tiny brain. Very serious circuitry.
humanvsbrain.com
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Did you know a fruit fly can make incredibly fast decisions with a brain smaller than a poppy seed?
It can detect threats, navigate, find food, court, fight and learn — using a nervous system tiny enough for scientists to map neuron by neuron.
That’s part of what makes the connectome so fascinating.
humanvsbrain.com
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Did you know we now have a wiring diagram of an entire fruit fly central nervous system?
Hundreds of thousands of neurons, mapped down to their connections.
So I turned part of that biological wiring into a browser game.
Can you beat it?
humanvsbrain.com
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Building Human vs Brain has made me realise how many interesting people are building here on X.
Indie games. Browser experiments. Simulations. AI. Neuroscience. Stuff that probably sounded like a terrible idea at first.
If you’re building something unusual, reply with it 👇
I want to follow more founders + game devs actually shipping things.
(Also i need ideas for my second game).
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Human vs Brain retweeted
Over 100 matches played. The brain evolves with each match.
The second game will share some of that plasticity.
The goal is to create an evolving ecosystem within the male CNS connectome of Drosophila melanogaster.
Play here -> humanvsbrain.com
Solo founder, building Human vs Brain, based in Lisbon.
Looking to connect with more indie hackers, founders & Founder!
Just put myself on the map 👇
makermap.lol/humanvsbrain?v=…
teapawt.net/verbove/status/2104175…
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I just hit 779 peak mass with Human vs Brain 🐟 Think your site can beat mine? outfish.lol/s?d=humanvsbrain…
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Over 100 matches played. The brain evolves with each match.
The second game will share some of that plasticity.
The goal is to create an evolving ecosystem within the male CNS connectome of Drosophila melanogaster.
Play here -> humanvsbrain.com
Human vs Brain now has persistent plasticity.
The MaleCNS-derived network keeps its anatomy fixed, but 300 existing synapses near the DNa02 LEFT/RIGHT output can change strength through experience.
After 10,000 controlled trials:
Accuracy: 93.75% → 94.05%
RIGHT accuracy: 87.5% → 88.1%
LEFT accuracy: 100% → 100%
Median neural decision latency: 840 ms → 820 ms
No new neurons. No new edges. No topology changes.
Next question: can repeated experience make the same fixed connectome reach correct decisions progressively earlier?
humanvsbrain.com
New targets for game 1. There is one easter egg target (or two). If you find them post here. There is a reward for you.
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Human vs Brain retweeted
I raced a fruit-fly brain simulation 🪰🧠
Human 8 — 2 Brain
10 rounds. 900 ms to react.
Think you're faster?
humanvsbrain.com
Human vs Brain retweeted
Can you beat these tiny insects?
A fruit fly is only a few millimetres long.
Give one a rotten apple and 25 days, and things escalate quickly.
And inside that tiny head is a nervous system we can now map and and play against.
Human vs Brain.
Can you beat these tiny insects?
A fruit fly is only a few millimetres long.
Give one a rotten apple and 25 days, and things escalate quickly.
And inside that tiny head is a nervous system we can now map and and play against.
Human vs Brain.
Could a connectome-powered fruit fly sleep, get lost in the dark, and escape a threat? 🪰🧠
The biology behind those behaviours is real:
• looming escape circuits via LC4/LPLC2 → Giant Fiber
• heading representation in the central complex
• circadian PER oscillations
• sleep/homeostatic regulation
The interesting part is combining real neural wiring with simplified dynamics and testing what behaviour emerges.
Not a digital fly. Not a complete brain simulation.
A computational experiment built from real neural circuitry.
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