Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb In. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is a classic from our archives. In this one, we
Speaker 1: delve into the differing communication styles of squid. They can
Speaker 1: create patterns on their skin to talk to each other
Speaker 1: even when the parts of their brains that make the
Speaker 1: talking happen are busy. Hey brain stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb here.
Speaker 1: Caltech physicist Richard Feinman once said, if you think you
Speaker 1: understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. It's possible.
Speaker 1: The same could be said about cephalopods, the group of
Speaker 1: invertebrates that include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. The last ancestor
Speaker 1: we shared with one of these living jello salads was
Speaker 1: probably a worm of some kind. So our DNA is
Speaker 1: basically nothing like their's, not that they care. They didn't
Speaker 1: really do evolution the same way we did, but nevertheless
Speaker 1: managed to independently evolve into uncannily clever camouflage artists with large,
Speaker 1: complex brains, closed circulatory systems, and camera style eyes just
Speaker 1: like ours, well not just like ours. The thing about
Speaker 1: cephalopods is they've had five hundred million years of independent
Speaker 1: evolution to figure out how to do things their own way.
Speaker 1: Any test you can create to measure something in a
Speaker 1: human intelligence, say, isn't going to work for an octopus,
Speaker 1: which is why neurobiologists studying cephalopods have jobs not unlike
Speaker 1: that of electricians figuring out the electrical grid on an
Speaker 1: alien planet. We spoke with Dr Sabrina Pankey, an evolutionary
Speaker 1: biologist in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences
Speaker 1: at the University of New Hampshire. She said, we've known
Speaker 1: for fifty years that the cephalopod brain is easily the
Speaker 1: most complex among invertebrates, and also that they're dazzlingly intricate.
Speaker 1: Body patterning behavior is controlled by motor centers in the brain. However,
Speaker 1: the neural architecture has been much more enigmatic. Figuring out
Speaker 1: the neural basis of complex behaviors is inherently difficult in
Speaker 1: any animal, but trying to figure out how as squid
Speaker 1: can completely change its body patterning in a matter of milliseconds,
Speaker 1: or display one pattern to the squid on its left
Speaker 1: and another to the one on its right, is a
Speaker 1: sticky wicket. As you can imagine. One hypothesis has been
Speaker 1: that body coloration is organized in the cephalopod brain somato topically,
Speaker 1: that one specific part of the central nervous system is
Speaker 1: solely responsible for controlling the patterning in a distinct patch
Speaker 1: of skin. That's how it works in our mammalion cortex
Speaker 1: after all. But a new study published in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Neuroscience shows again cephalopods are not like us, and
Speaker 1: are in fact very not like us. The research team
Speaker 1: proposes its study subject, the oval squid, also known as
Speaker 1: the big fin reef squid, achieves its skin patterning through
Speaker 1: mosaic organization. That these squid actually use multiple motor centers
Speaker 1: within the optic lobe of their brain to produce a
Speaker 1: sin goal skin pattern like stripes, bands, or spots. The
Speaker 1: fact that several parts of the brain work together it
Speaker 1: wants to create a single display allows for greater complexity
Speaker 1: in the resulting pattern. It would be like using multiple
Speaker 1: keyboards to write the same document all at the same time.
Speaker 1: We vertebrates just don't do things that way. Dr Chun
Speaker 1: tin Chio, director of the Institute of Systems Neuroscience at
Speaker 1: the National sing Hua University in Taiwan, and his co
Speaker 1: author and student Sung Han Lieu think that because several
Speaker 1: different areas of the optic lobe can be used to
Speaker 1: display a single skin pattern in a specific body part
Speaker 1: dark mantles, stripey tentacles, polka dot fins, that the squid
Speaker 1: are able to flash about fourteen distinct patterns in the
Speaker 1: blink of an eye. We tend to think of redundancy
Speaker 1: as inefficient, but cephalopods have overlapping parts of their brains
Speaker 1: to create specific patterns on specific body parts, meaning that
Speaker 1: if one part of their brain is busy, they can
Speaker 1: still flash information onto their bodies with a inspiring quickness.
Speaker 1: Just think if you had a bunch of different parts
Speaker 1: of your brain in charge of remembering a single word,
Speaker 1: your word recall skills would be amazing, GEO said via email.
Speaker 1: We think this research is particularly interesting because it shows
Speaker 1: how squids can efficiently modulate the expression of individual body
Speaker 1: pattern components, thus changing the appearance of their body color dynamically.
Speaker 1: This allows the squids to quickly switch different body patterns
Speaker 1: in visual communication. Thus it is sort of like an
Speaker 1: alphabet visual language. The researchers think the color patterns displayed
Speaker 1: by the squid are not only used as communication signals
Speaker 1: to the same species, but are also used to hide
Speaker 1: or worn off other potential predators or prey. This research
Speaker 1: also highlights the fact that though we vertebrates tend to
Speaker 1: think we've got the best systems for doing everything, cephalopods
Speaker 1: might be onto something, at least when it comes to
Speaker 1: efficient communication. Panky said, the way these body patterns can
Speaker 1: be created thanks to various combinations of brain centers activating
Speaker 1: reminds me of word creation in a glutinative languages like German.
Speaker 1: There is a linguistic mechanism to create compound words that
Speaker 1: then take on new meaning. Maybe eventually will know enough
Speaker 1: about the cephalopod brain that we can find out whether
Speaker 1: squid learn word patterns by observation or if the information
Speaker 1: is hardwired, and whether different populations speak in different patterns.
Speaker 1: But for now, the researchers are focusing on learning how
Speaker 1: visual information from the eyes regulates body patterning in the
Speaker 1: squids when they are communicating with each other in their
Speaker 1: natural environments. Geo said, this will be much more difficult
Speaker 1: than anything we've shown so far. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article secret alphabet of squid skin due to
Speaker 1: brains totally unlike our own on how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Written by Jesslan Shields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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