“People are becoming more interested in Physarum because it doesn’t have a brain but it can still perform a lot of the behaviors that we associate with thinking, like solving mazes, learning new things, and predicting events,” mentioned first writer Nirosha Murugan, a former member of the Allen Discovery Center who’s now an Assistant Professor at Algoma University in Ontario, Canada. “Figuring out how proto-intelligent life manages to do this type of computation gives us more insight into the underpinnings of animal cognition and behavior, including our own.”
‘Studies in brainless slime molds reveal that they use bodily cues to determine the place to develop, thereby pondering with out an precise mind.
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Slimy motion at a distance
Slime molds are amoeba-like organisms that may develop to be as much as a number of ft lengthy, and assist break down decomposing matter within the atmosphere like rotting logs, mulch, and useless leaves.
The researchers experimented with a number of variables to see how they impacted Physarum’s development selections, and observed one thing uncommon: once they stacked the identical three discs on high of one another, the organism appeared to lose its potential to differentiate between the three discs and the only disc. It grew towards either side of the dish at roughly equal charges, even though the three stacked discs nonetheless had better mass. Clearly, Physarum was utilizing one other issue past mass to determine the place to develop.
The workforce’s analysis demonstrated that this brainless creature was not merely rising towards the heaviest factor it might sense – it was making a calculated choice about the place to develop based mostly on the relative patterns of pressure it detected in its atmosphere.
“Our discovery of this slime mold’s use of biomechanics to probe and react to its surrounding environment underscores how early this ability evolved in living organisms, and how closely related intelligence, behavior, and morphogenesis are. In this organism, which grows out to interact with the world, its shape change is its behavior. Other research has shown that similar strategies are used by cells in more complex animals, including neurons, stem cells, and cancer cells. This work in Physarum offers a new model in which to explore the ways in which evolution uses physics to implement primitive cognition that drives form and function,” says corresponding writer Mike Levin, Ph.D., a Wyss Associate Faculty member who can be the Vannevar Bush Chair and serves and Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University.
Source: Medindia
