Collaborative Proposal: No Brainer: Cognitive-like Behaviors in a Unicellular Slime Mold

合作提案：无需动脑筋：单细胞粘菌中的类认知行为

• 批准号: 1557610
• 负责人: Simon Garnier
• 金额: $ 34万
• 依托单位: New Jersey Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2020-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557610&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; No; Brainer; Cognitive

Most of life is brainless and the vast majority of organisms on Earth lack neurons altogether. These organisms include plants, fungi, and bacteria (both non-pathogenic and disease-causing types), who all must cope with the same problem as humans - make the best choices in an ever changing world or risk dying - but without the help of a brain or even a simple nervous system. This project will explore the decision-making abilities of one of these neuron-less organisms, the slime mold Physarum polycephalum. Of particular interest is (1) how P. polycephalum integrates noisy and sometimes contradictory information when selecting a food source; and (2) the role of its past experiences (e.g. the resources it has previously visited) on the outcome of its future choices. Because P. polycephalum is a macroscopic unicellular organism, it can be easily manipulated and observed, while retaining similar characteristics to other neuron-less, microscopic creatures. It is therefore a perfect model system to understand how most living beings integrate complex and dynamical information. The project will train 2 graduate students and at least 15 undergraduate and high school students in integrative research at one of the most diverse campuses in the US (Rutgers-Newark and NJIT, both located in Newark, NJ) and at a collaborating lab in Sydney, Australia. "Hands-on", open sourced demonstration kits for K-12 classes to experiment with slime mold locomotion and decision-making will be developed to encourage the study of cognitive processes in neuron-less organisms and other non-traditional model organisms. The proposed project will set up a comprehensive experimental and theoretical framework that can be used beyond the scope of this project to study decision-making in other neuron-less organisms and to establish comparisons with brained animals, thereby advancing our comprehension of the emergence of cognitive processes in biological systems. Cell micromanipulation and calcium imaging combined with analytical tools from neurophysiology and statistical physics will be used to first investigate the role of contractile oscillations of P. polycephalum's cellular plasma membrane in its decision-making process. In particular, the transfer and integration of information from different stimuli will be examined. The efficiency of the slime mold decision-making mechanism when the available information is noisy or contradictory will also be tested. Finally, whether the slime mold's natural positive geotaxis (motion in the direction of gravity) can be conditioned (i.e., reversed here) if food is always present uphill will be determined. This would indicate that the slime mold is capable of spatial associative learning (a first in the slime mold), and that its decision-making process is capable of adapting to the characteristics of the environment through which it moves. All methods, results and software developed during this project will be made freely available on a repository hosted by the Open Science Framework.

大多数生命都是无脑的，地球上绝大多数生物都完全缺乏神经元。这些生物包括植物、真菌和细菌（包括非致病性和致病性），它们都必须科普与人类相同的问题--在不断变化的世界中做出最佳选择，否则就有死亡的危险--但没有大脑甚至简单的神经系统的帮助。这个项目将探索这些无神经元生物之一的决策能力，黏菌多头绒泡菌。特别令人感兴趣的是（1）在选择食物来源时，多头绒螯蟹如何整合嘈杂的，有时是矛盾的信息;（2）它过去的经验（例如它以前访问过的资源）对其未来选择结果的作用。由于多头绒螯蟹是一种宏观的单细胞生物，它可以很容易地被操纵和观察，同时保留了与其他无神经元的微观生物相似的特征。因此，它是理解大多数生物如何整合复杂和动态信息的完美模型系统。该项目将在美国最多样化的校园之一（罗格斯-纽瓦克和NJIT，都位于新泽西州的纽瓦克）和澳大利亚悉尼的合作实验室培训2名研究生和至少15名本科生和高中生进行综合研究。将为K-12班开发“动手”、开放源码的演示工具包，以实验黏菌的运动和决策，鼓励研究无神经元生物和其他非传统模式生物的认知过程。拟议的项目将建立一个全面的实验和理论框架，可用于本项目范围之外的其他无神经元生物体的决策研究，并与有脑动物进行比较，从而促进我们对生物系统中认知过程出现的理解。细胞显微操作和钙成像与神经生理学和统计物理学的分析工具相结合，将被用来首先研究P. polycephalum细胞质膜的收缩振荡在其决策过程中的作用。特别是，从不同的刺激信息的转移和整合将被检查。还将测试当可用信息是嘈杂的或矛盾的时黏菌决策机制的效率。最后，黏菌的自然正趋地性（在重力方向上的运动）是否可以被调节（即，如果食物总是在上坡，则将确定。这表明黏菌能够进行空间联想学习（这在黏菌中是第一次），并且它的决策过程能够适应它所移动的环境的特征。该项目期间开发的所有方法、结果和软件将在开放科学框架托管的存储库中免费提供。

项目成果

Information Transfer During Food Choice in the Slime Mold Physarum polycephalum

粘菌多头绒泡菌食物选择过程中的信息传递

• DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00067
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
• 影响因子: 3
• 作者: Ray, Subash K.;Valentini, Gabriele;Shah, Purva;Haque, Abid;Reid, Chris R.;Weber, Gregory F.;Garnier, Simon
• 通讯作者: Garnier, Simon