REVIEW article
Front. Neural Circuits
This article is part of the Research TopicBridging neuroscience and artificial neural networks: A collaborative quest to understand complex neural systemsView all articles
From Small Brains to Smart Machines: Translating Caenorhabditis elegans Neural Circuits into Artificial Intelligence
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangdong Institute of Intelligence Science and Technology, Guangdong, Zhuhai, China
- 2Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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The hermaphroditic Caenorhabditis elegans, with its fully mapped connectome of 302 neurons, offers a paradigmatic example of how a minimal nervous system governs biotic, adaptive, and context-dependent behaviors. In contrast, modern artificial intelligence systems achieve intelligence through scale rather than efficiency, relying instead on massive datasets and artificially engineered architec-tures. This mini-review explores how Caenorhabditis elegans neural circuits can inform the development of more efficient and flexible artificial neural networks. We highlight recent studies that translate the principles inherent to Caenorhab-ditis elegans neural circuits into artificial neural network architectures, with applications in machine control and image classification, resulting in enhanced robustness and improved performance. By distilling neural principles from the simplest known nervous system, this mini-review outlines a pathway toward compact, adaptive, and biologically inspired artificial intelligence systems.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, artificial neural network, Bionics design, Caenorhabditis elegans, neural circuits
Received: 24 Oct 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 WANG, Liu and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: XUEBIN WANG
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.