In this episode of 2Humans, we look at two recent science papers that sound like they escaped from a sci-fi film: a digitally reconstructed fly brain/connectome, and brain organoids being explored as computing systems.

We talk through what the research actually shows, why it feels so strange, and what it might mean for neuroscience, computing, AI, and the slightly unsettling future of biological machines.

Links and references:

Kagan et al. (2022): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627322008066 Cai et al. (2023): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-023-01069-w Robbins et al. (2026): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41720084/ Scientific American / Cortical Labs (2026): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-human-neurons-on-a-chip-learned-to-play-doom/
Schlegel et al. (2024): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07686-5 Shiu et al. (2024): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07763-9 NIH context page: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/researchers-fully-map-neural-connections-fruit-fly-brain Eon Systems demo: https://eon.systems/updates/embodied-brain-emulation