Philip Ball reports in Nature on new findings that show how the slime mo[u]ld can anticipate periodic events.
The actual paper is published as Amoebae Anticipate Periodic Events in Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 018101 (2008) by authors Tetsu Saigusa, Atsushi Tero, Toshiyuki Nakagaki and Yoshiki Kuramoto
Abstract:
When plasmodia of the true slime mold Physarum were exposed to unfavorable conditions presented as three consecutive pulses at constant intervals, they reduced their locomotive speed in response to each episode. When the plasmodia were subsequently subjected to favorable conditions, they spontaneously reduced their locomotive speed at the time when the next unfavorable episode would have occurred. This implied the anticipation of impending environmental change. We explored the mechanisms underlying these types of behavior from a dynamical systems perspective.
According to Ball, the mould was exposed to a rhythmic stimulus and showed that it learned when the next stimulus would arrive. The memory would slowly fade but could be reinforced by a later stimulus.
The team found that when the mould experienced three episodes of dry air in regular succession an hour apart, it apparently came to expect more: it slowed down when a fourth pulse of dry air was due, even if none was actually applied. Sometimes this anticipatory slow-down would be repeated another hour later, and even a third. The same behaviour was seen when the pulses were experienced at other regular time intervals — say, every half hour or every 1.5 hours.
If the dry episodes did not recur after the first three, the amoeba’s sense of expectation gradually faded away. But then applying a single dry pulse about six hours later commonly led to another anticipatory slowing in step with the earlier rhythm.
Ball explains the significance of these findings
Learning and memory — abilities associated with a brain or, at the very least, neuronal activity — have been observed in protoplasmic slime, a unicellular organism with multiple nuclei.
In other words, science has shown how unicellular organisms like the slime mould have the ability to learn and remember. Memory and learning seem to not be limited to us humans and can be found, as expected from an evolutionary perspective across organisms.
The amoeba Physarum polycephalum is quite a performer as it has been able to navigate mazes and solve simple puzzles
Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H. & A. Tóth. “Intelligence: Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism” Nature 407, 470 (2000).
The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large amoeba-like cell consisting of a dendritic network of tube-like structures (pseudopodia). It changes its shape as it crawls over a plain agar gel and, if food is placed at two different points, it will put out pseudopodia that connect the two food sources. Here we show that this simple organism has the ability to find the minimum-length solution between two points in a labyrinth.
Nakagaki, T., Kobayashi, R., Nishiura, Y. & Ueda, T. “Obtaining multiple separate food sources: behavioural intelligence in the Physarum plasmodium” Proc. R. Soc. B 271, 2305-2310 (2004).
To evaluate performance in a complex survival task, we studied the morphology of the Physarum plasmodium transportation network when presented with multiple separate food sources. The plasmodium comprises a network of tubular elements through which chemical nutrient, intracellular signals and the viscous body are transported and circulated. When three separate food sources were presented, located at the vertices of a triangle, the tubular network connected them via a short pathway, which was often analogous to the mathematically shortest route known as Steiner’s minimum tree (SMT). The other common network shape had high fault tolerance against accidental disconnection of the tubes and was known as cycle (CYC). Pattern selection appeared to be a bistable system involving SMT and CYC. When more than three food sources were presented, the network pattern tended to be a patchwork of SMT and CYC. We therefore concluded that the plasmodium tube network is a well designed and intelligent system.
But their still just amoebaeses!!!!11!!
Worse, they seem to be smarter than some of us humans :-)
Did the research cover the mechanism for the recording of the memory? I’d be really curious to learn about that.
Yes
I am still hoping to find the original paper but here is an earlier abstract of a talk given by one of the authors
Once again, simplicity gives rise to complexity.
Heh. I saw the headline for this post and figured it was about DI somehow…
Quote-mine alert!!
Wonder how long before the DI posts this quote?
“Intelligent” and “design” in the same sentence?!
So even slime molds are smarter than Salvador Cordova!
Signed, The Master of MacGuyvers
we get them in the yard. sometimes a foot across. yellow ones and pink ones. dang big for a unicellular “critter”. never knew they could be trained. wonder what neat tricks we could teach them?
“Eat Tokyo, then New York”?
Russell wrote:
“never knew they could be trained. wonder what neat tricks we could teach them?”
Well I just read a paper that reported altruism in cellular slime molds. I’ll look up the reference if anyone is interested. Just goes to show that the evolution of altruism is not limited to social insect and primates.
That sounds fascinating.
How does altruism in cellular slime molds work?
link
and
Evolutionary dynamics of altruism and cheating among social amoebas Å Brännström and U Dieckmann
Thanks PvM.
How can evolutionists explain this in terms of random motions of atoms? How does the amoeba solve the maze if everything it does is random and not informed by intelligent design? This seems to be a problem for Darwinism.
No it is a problem for those who misunderstand evolution to be random.
Jeez…
Pole Greaser,
How can you understand anything given the random motion of atoms in your head?
Seriously, this is just another example of how modern evolutionary theory helps us to understand the interactions between differrent organisms, such as mating strains of slime molds. Read the paper and see what hypotheses were tested and what the results were. Then, if you think that an intelligent design hypothesis is a better explanation, by all means, describe the hypothesis for us and describe how it can be tested.
In case you missed the point, everything the slime mold does is not “random”. The interactions are governed by evolutionary principles and the system continues to evolve. Throwing out the word “random” every time you don’t understand something only convinces people that you don’t know what that word means either.
“Pole Greaser” is trolling, if you can’t tell by the name.
Whenever something is non-random, it is a product of intelligent design. Now matter how low the p-value gets, Darwinism insists the chance hypothesis must be correct!
PG,
Wrong. The water molecules in a snow flake are not arranged randomly and not a product of intelligent design. This also holds for the salt and sugar crystals in you kitchen.
Pole Greaser wrote:
“Whenever something is non-random, it is a product of intelligent design.”
Wow, what a break through! You should tell Behe and Dembski, now they can stop arguing over all that specified complexly complexified complex complexity stuff. As rog has already pointed out, lots of things that are “non-random” cannot reasonably be construed as being caused by “intelligence”, unless of course everything is caused by “intelligence”, in which case it explains exactly nothing.
And thanks for once again ignoring all my questions. Here is another one for you. Please define natural selection and show how it is either “random” or “intelligent” if those are the only alternatives you see.
Update