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WERM

WERM (Wiring-Encoded Recurrent Modulator) is a computational-neuroscience simulation that models a 302-neuron Caenorhabditis elegans network using the worm's published connectome. It runs as a rate network with a liquid-time-constant-style gate; the model treats the 28 GABA-releasing neurons as inhibitory and the remaining neurons as excitatory, and supports simulated sensory stimuli such as nose and tail touch.

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Overview

A steering layer maps the simulated worm state to language-model sampling settings and a tone prompt. WERM can run in a browser, in Node.js, or connect on the user's computer to Ollama or another local server implementing the OpenAI chat-completions API. The repository reports that tail and nose stimuli produce the expected forward or backward network responses in its tests, while the effect of the language-model steering has not yet been measured.

The project requires Node 20 or newer, has no runtime dependencies, includes scripts for rerunning parameter sweeps and experiments, and is licensed under the MIT license. It is an intentionally small model without muscles, body physics, neuropeptides, learning, or comparison against recordings from living worms.

What WERM is used for

1 use taken from transcripts — each links to the moment in the video.

  • Builds a tiny neural network from the published wiring diagram of a 302-neuron worm: simulate a touch to its nose or tail and watch activity move through the network. Includes an experimental bridge to local language models where worm state nudges response tone.

Videos mentioning WERM

1 in the library.