Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds

Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds.

Learning, defined as a change in behaviour evoked by experience, has hitherto been investigated almost exclusively in multicellular neural organisms. Evidence for learning in non-neural multicellular organisms is scant, and only a few unequivocal reports of learning have been described in single-celled organisms. Here we demonstrate habituation, an unmistakable form of learning, in the non-neur...

Are Slime Moulds Living Memristors?

In laboratory experiments we demonstrate that protoplasmic tubes of acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum show current versus voltage profiles consistent with memristive systems. This result complements previous findings on memristive properties of other living systems (human skin and blood and leaves) and contributes to development of self-growing bioelectronic circuits.

Chemoattractant-mediated changes in cytoskeletal actin of cellular slime moulds.

We report changes in actin associated with the Triton-insoluble cytoskeleton following chemotactic stimulation in five species of cellular slime mould, Dictyostelium discoideum, D. mucoroides, D. purpureum, D. lacteum and Polysphondylium violaceum. Stimulation of amoebae with the chemoattractant specific for each species elicits a rapid increase in cytoskeletal actin content with a peak at 5 s,...

Two peculiar pleomorphic slime organisms isolated from human lesions.

Neural Habituation to Painful Stimuli Is Modulated by Dopamine: Evidence from a Pharmacological fMRI Study

In constantly changing environments, it is crucial to adaptively respond to threatening events. In particular, painful stimuli are not only processed in terms of their absolute intensity, but also with respect to their context. While contextual pain processing can simply entail the repeated processing of information (i.e., habituation), it can, in a more complex form, be expressed through predi...