  We report an improvement to the conventional Echo State Network (ESN) across
three benchmark chaotic time-series prediction tasks using fruit fly connectome
data alone. We also investigate the impact of key connectome-derived structural
features on prediction performance -- uniquely bridging neurobiological
structure and machine learning function; and find that both increasing the
global average clustering coefficient and modifying the position of weights --
by permuting their synapse-synapse partners -- can lead to increased model
variance and (in some cases) degraded performance. In all we consider four
topological point modifications to a connectome-derived ESN reservoir (null
model): namely, we alter the network sparsity, re-draw nonzero weights from a
uniform distribution, permute nonzero weight positions, and increase the
network global average clustering coefficient. We compare the four resulting
ESN model classes -- and the null model -- with a conventional ESN by
conducting time-series prediction experiments on size-variants of the
Mackey-Glass 17 (MG-17), Lorenz, and Rossler chaotic time series; denoting each
model's performance and variance across train-validate trials.
