Sensorimotor behaviour from an untrained brain-and-nerve-cord connectome
Abstract
Connectomes now map the neurons and synapses of an adult fly's brain and nerve cord, but how much of behaviour follows from the wiring is unknown. Here we turn one such connectome into a spiking network of 172,433 neurons with a published brain model's untuned parameters, and run it alone and inside a simulated body. Two fixed rules join them: odours and looming objects drive sensory neurons, and motor neurons move the legs. Alone, the network passes a signal to the motor neurons it is known to drive when the pathway supplies about 2% or more of their input. In the body, the fly navigates around obstacles to 95% of the odour sources. A rewiring that keeps each neuron's connection counts and signs reaches 18%, and the fly's leg commands replayed with the senses off reach almost none, so navigation needs the measured wiring and sensory feedback. Dopamine-gated weakening of the mushroom body's output synapses turns approach to an odour into avoidance, which requires the pairing and is odour-specific once one olfactory synapse class is scaled. An untrained connectome thus supports a behaviour and its learned reversal, and the pathways it cannot drive mark what the diagram leaves out.
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BibTeX
@misc{minnick2026sensorimotor,
title = {{Sensorimotor behaviour from an untrained brain-and-nerve-cord connectome}},
author = {John R. Minnick and Jesus Gonzalez-Ferrer and Jinghui Geng and Jason K. Eshraghian and Mohammed A. Mostajo-Radji and David Haussler and Mircea Teodorescu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.33881},
eprint = {2610.33881},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33881},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Sensorimotor behaviour from an untrained brain-and-nerve-cord connectome
AU - John R. Minnick
AU - Jesus Gonzalez-Ferrer
AU - Jinghui Geng
AU - Jason K. Eshraghian
AU - Mohammed A. Mostajo-Radji
AU - David Haussler
AU - Mircea Teodorescu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.33881
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33881
AB - Connectomes now map the neurons and synapses of an adult fly's brain and nerve cord, but how much of behaviour follows from the wiring is unknown. Here we turn one such connectome into a spiking network of 172,433 neurons with a published brain model's untuned parameters, and run it alone and inside a simulated body. Two fixed rules join them: odours and looming objects drive sensory neurons, and motor neurons move the legs. Alone, the network passes a signal to the motor neurons it is known to drive when the pathway supplies about 2% or more of their input. In the body, the fly navigates around obstacles to 95% of the odour sources. A rewiring that keeps each neuron's connection counts and signs reaches 18%, and the fly's leg commands replayed with the senses off reach almost none, so navigation needs the measured wiring and sensory feedback. Dopamine-gated weakening of the mushroom body's output synapses turns approach to an odour into avoidance, which requires the pairing and is odour-specific once one olfactory synapse class is scaled. An untrained connectome thus supports a behaviour and its learned reversal, and the pathways it cannot drive mark what the diagram leaves out.
ER -