Maze—solving by an amoeboid organism
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Protozoans like Physarum can escape mazes and solve problems, and Paramecium can swim, find food and mates, learn, remember and have sex, all without synaptic connections.
“Protozoans like Physarum can escape mazes and solve problems, and Paramecium can swim, find food and mates, learn, remember and have sex, all without synaptic connections [25,26].”
From Consciousness in the universe (2014) · cites this paper as [25]
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Cites
Chemical Oscillations, Waves, and Turbulence
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Self-citationInteraction between cell shape and contraction pattern in the Physarum plasmodium
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Self-citationControl of chemotaxis in Physarum polycephalum.
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Propagation of phase wave in relation to tactic responses by the plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum
Matsumoto, K., Ueda, T., & Kobatake, Y. (1986) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/s0022-5193(86)80125-4 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
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Self-citationMotions of spiral waves in oscillatory media and in the presence of obstacles
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Self-citationPath Finding with Nonlinear Waves
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Sepulchre, J. A., Babloyantz, A. & Steels, L. in Proc. Int. Conf. on Artificial Neural Networks (eds Kohonen, T. et al.) 1265-1268 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991).
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Hameroff, S., & Penrose, R. (2014) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002 · Cited by 983 · see citing works
“In another approach, panpsychism attributes consciousness to all matter, but without scientific identity or causal influence.”
BackgroundMemristor-based neural networks
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Green plants as intelligent organisms
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AHaH Computing–From Metastable Switches to Attractors to Machine Learning
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Externalized memory in slime mould and the extended (non-neuronal) mind
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On the Solution of the Steiner Tree NP-Hard Problem via Physarum BioNetwork
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Is free-energy minimisation the mark of the cognitive?
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Chemotaxis emerges as the optimal solution to cooperative search games
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Traces of thinking: a stigmergic approach to 4E cognition
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“P. polycephalum is a unicellular multi-nucleate slime mould that in the vegetative (plasmodium) stage of its life cycle has shown itself to be quite capable of performing cognitive tasks such as navigating mazes and making decisions (Nakagaki et al. , 2000, 2004).”
- Authors
- Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H., & Tóth, Á.
- Affiliations
- RIKEN (JP)
- Hokkaido University (JP)
- University of Szeged (HU)
- Corresponding author
- Nakagaki, Toshiyuki
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2000-09-28
- Volume
- 407
- Issue
- 6803
- Pages
- 470-470
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1661179413
- Cited by
- 1,022
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 39 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 67 · 2021: 74 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 49 · 2018: 52 · 2017: 63 · 2016: 71 · 2015: 68 · 2014: 66 · 2013: 61 · 2012: 47
- FWCI
- 3.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Planarian Biology and Electrostimulation
- Keywords
- Physarum polycephalum, slime molds, Plasmodium, maze solving, pseudopodia, foraging behavior, amoeboid locomotion
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Physarum polycephalum, Maze Learning
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