slime mold decisions: study of decision making (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 15, 2021, 21:40 (1225 days ago) @ David Turell

Latest findings:

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-brain-brainless-slime-molds-reveal.html

"The team's research demonstrated that this brainless creature was not simply growing toward the heaviest thing it could sense—it was making a calculated decision about where to grow based on the relative patterns of strain it detected in its environment.

"But how was it detecting these strain patterns? The scientists suspected it had to do with Physarum's ability to rhythmically contract and tug on its substrate, because the pulsing and sensing of the resultant changes in substrate deformation allows the organism to gain information about its surroundings. Other animals have special channel proteins in their cell membranes called TRP-like proteins that detect stretching, and co-author and Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D had previously shown that one of these TRP proteins mediates mechanosensing in human cells. When the team created a potent TRP channel-blocking drug and applied it to Physarum, the organism lost its ability to distinguish between high and low masses, only selecting the high-mass region in 11% of the trials and selecting both high- and low-mass regions in 71% of trials.

"'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," said corresponding author Mike Levin, Ph.D., a Wyss Associate Faculty member who is also the Vannevar Bush Chair and serves and Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University."

Comment: this study shows the slime mold can sense the stresses and respond. I think the response are automatic to what is sensed. As the authors note an early step in setting up responses in more complex cells and structures.