Category: Uncategorized

SOPHISTICATION. “Physarum’s information processing capabilities are relatively advanced, as single-celled organisms have evolved to behave in a demanding evolutionary environment.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

PROCESSING INFORMATION. “Life is characterized in terms of information processing and single-celled organisms show remarkably advanced information processing capabilities. A neural network with inter-cellular connections is not necessary for biological computation, which may have implications for brain studies.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

BIOCOMPUTING. “Slime mold is a living prototype of amorphous biological computers and robotic devices capable of solving a range of tasks of graph optimization and computational geometry.” http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6482606/ View in LinkedIn

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE. “We provide a unique demonstration of a spatial memory system in a nonneuronal organism, supporting the theory that an externalized spatial memory may be the functional precursor to the internal memory of higher organisms.” http://www.pnas.org/content/109/43/17490.full View in LinkedIn

BRAINLESS MEMORY. “Spatial memory enhances an organism’s navigational ability. Memory typically resides within the brain, but what if an organism has no brain? We show that the brainless slime mold Physarum polycephalum constructs a form of spatial memory by avoiding areas it has previously explored.” http://www.pnas.org/content/109/43/17490.full View in LinkedIn

DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY. “It came as some surprise when researchers discovered that an evolutionarily simple slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, consisting nominally of a single cell, was able to compute a near optimal path through a maze.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

NEURAL PATHWAYS. “We uncover analogies between the slime mold and neurons, and demonstrate that the slime mold can play the roles of primitive mechanoreceptors, photoreceptors, and chemoreceptors; we also show how the Physarum neural pathways develop.” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTL_a_00153 View in LinkedIn

GATHERING DATA. “A slime mold makes decisions about its propagation direction based on information fusion from thousands of spatially extended protoplasmic loci, similarly to a neuron collecting information from its dendritic tree. The analogy is distant yet inspiring.” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTL_a_00153 View in LinkedIn

LEADERSHIP. “In the early stages of Dictyostelium aggregation, the waves of cAMP that give rise to the distinctive spiral and circular wave patterns are controlled by small numbers of ‘pacemaker cells’ that send out coordinated pulses of cAMP. These cells play a key role in organising collective behaviour in Dictyostelium. Growing evidence suggests that these leaders arise by chance, with no cells intrinsically destined to be leaders.” https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/40/6/798/2400841 View in LinkedIn

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. “In Physarum, positive feedback generated through increased oscillation rate and tube size results in the engulfment of profitable food sources, while negative feedback likely generated by crowding at the food source causes engulfment to stop once the entire surface is covered.” https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/40/6/798/2400841 View in LinkedIn