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Main Authors: Jin, Zehao, Zhu, Yaoye, Zhang, Chen, Sui, Yanan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17997
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author Jin, Zehao
Zhu, Yaoye
Zhang, Chen
Sui, Yanan
author_facet Jin, Zehao
Zhu, Yaoye
Zhang, Chen
Sui, Yanan
contents Whole-brain biological neural networks naturally support the learning and control of whole-body movements. However, the use of brain connectomes as neural network controllers in embodied reinforcement learning remains unexplored. We investigate using the exact neural architecture of an adult fruit fly's brain for the control of its body movement. We develop Fly-connectomic Graph Model (FlyGM), whose static structure is identical to the complete connectome of an adult Drosophila for whole-body locomotion control. To perform dynamical control, FlyGM represents the static connectome as a directed message-passing graph to impose a biologically grounded information flow from sensory inputs to motor outputs. Integrated with a biomechanical fruit fly model, our method achieves stable control across diverse locomotion tasks without task-specific architectural tuning. To verify the structural advantages of the connectome-based model, we compare it against a degree-preserving rewired graph, a random graph, and multilayer perceptrons, showing that FlyGM yields higher sample efficiency and superior performance. This work demonstrates that static brain connectomes can be transformed to instantiate effective neural policy for embodied learning of movement control.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_17997
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Whole-Brain Connectomic Graph Model Enables Whole-Body Locomotion Control in Fruit Fly
Jin, Zehao
Zhu, Yaoye
Zhang, Chen
Sui, Yanan
Machine Learning
Robotics
Whole-brain biological neural networks naturally support the learning and control of whole-body movements. However, the use of brain connectomes as neural network controllers in embodied reinforcement learning remains unexplored. We investigate using the exact neural architecture of an adult fruit fly's brain for the control of its body movement. We develop Fly-connectomic Graph Model (FlyGM), whose static structure is identical to the complete connectome of an adult Drosophila for whole-body locomotion control. To perform dynamical control, FlyGM represents the static connectome as a directed message-passing graph to impose a biologically grounded information flow from sensory inputs to motor outputs. Integrated with a biomechanical fruit fly model, our method achieves stable control across diverse locomotion tasks without task-specific architectural tuning. To verify the structural advantages of the connectome-based model, we compare it against a degree-preserving rewired graph, a random graph, and multilayer perceptrons, showing that FlyGM yields higher sample efficiency and superior performance. This work demonstrates that static brain connectomes can be transformed to instantiate effective neural policy for embodied learning of movement control.
title Whole-Brain Connectomic Graph Model Enables Whole-Body Locomotion Control in Fruit Fly
topic Machine Learning
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17997