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