Megaphragma mymaripenne

7,400-NEURON SPIKING BRAIN · CLOSED-LOOP FLIGHT · ~200 µm

Wingbeat 300 Hz Visual gain 1.0 Sim speed 6×

COMPOUND EYESL · R · 29 each

The bright eye is the one facing the target — it steers that side's wings.

AboutDigiSim Museum

The DigiSim Museum is a gallery of living machines — every exhibit is a real simulation running live in your browser, not a recording. Poke it and it responds.

This exhibit. Megaphragma mymaripenne is among the smallest insects alive, yet it flies, hunts and lays eggs on a brain of roughly 7,400 neurons. Here that brain is rebuilt as 7,400 spiking neurons in 7 populations, wired by a fixed synapse matrix.

How it works. Nothing is scripted. The compound eyes see the egg clutch and excite the photoreceptors; the signal climbs optic lobe → central brain → descending → motor; the left/right motor spike rates that emerge become wing lift and yaw. The wasp turns toward whatever its eyes face — closed-loop flight from spikes alone.

Try it. Click the leaf to drop a new target, drag to orbit, scroll to zoom. The panels on the right show the same brain three ways: every neuron's live activity, per-population firing rate, and three membrane-voltage traces.

NEURAL ACTIVITY

POPULATION FIRING RATEHz

MEMBRANE POTENTIALmV

About Megaphragma — In-Silico Micro-Wasp

Megaphragma mymaripenne is one of the smallest insects alive — a parasitic wasp barely 200 micrometres long, smaller than some single-celled organisms. To fit a working nervous system into that volume its brain is pared down to about 7,400 neurons, most of which, astonishingly, lose their cell nuclei when the adult emerges. This exhibit is that animal rebuilt in silico: every neuron is simulated, the compound eye feeds the brain, and the brain flies the body — a closed loop you can watch from the inside.

Nothing here is keyframed. The 7,400 neurons obey the Izhikevich spiking equations, sorted into seven populations — photoreceptors, optic lobe, antennal mechanosensors, central brain, descending neurons, a motor central-pattern generator, and the ventral nerve cord — wired together by a fixed synapse matrix in which about a quarter of the interneurons are fast-spiking and inhibitory. The 58-facet compound eye maps where the target sits to a blob of light; the eye on the target’s side excites its own motor pool, so the wasp banks toward whatever it sees. The left and right motor spike rates become wing amplitudes, and a stroke-averaged flat-plate flight model turns those into lift, thrust, and yaw. Speed it up, change the visual gain, and watch the firing-rate bars and membrane traces drive the flight in real time.

The wingbeat is slowed to a watchable twelve beats a second; in life it is nearer three hundred, a blur. The wings themselves are the species’ signature — ptilopterous “feather wings,” narrow straps fringed with bristles instead of a solid membrane, which is how an insect this small still gets a grip on air. A museum that opens with a pendulum and closes with a chip here adds the smallest computer of all — a living one — and the same spike-to-motor logic it runs is the kind of signal flow you can build gate by gate in DigiSim.

Specifications

Brain: 7,400 Izhikevich spiking neurons, 7 populations, fixed synapse matrix
Vision: 58-facet compound eye (29/eye) → ipsilateral reflex steering
Flight: Stroke-averaged flat-plate model; motor spike rates set lift & yaw
Simulated: Closed-loop phototaxis — sense, spike, fly, seek, capture

More from Neuroscience

Drag to orbit · click the leaf to drop a target · scroll to zoom

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