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

大多数生命是没有大脑的，地球上的绝大多数生物完全缺乏神经元。这些生物包括植物、真菌和细菌(包括非致病类型和致病类型)，它们都必须像人类一样应对同样的问题--在不断变化的世界中做出最佳选择，否则就会面临死亡的风险--但没有大脑的帮助，甚至没有简单的神经系统。这个项目将探索其中一种无神经元有机体--粘液霉菌--多头绒泡菌的决策能力。特别令人感兴趣的是(1)在选择食物来源时，多头藻如何整合嘈杂的、有时是相互矛盾的信息；以及(2)其过去的经验(例如，它以前访问过的资源)对其未来选择的结果所起的作用。由于P.Polycephalum是一种宏观的单细胞生物体，因此它很容易被操纵和观察，同时保留了与其他无神经元的微观生物相似的特征。因此，这是一个完美的模型系统，可以理解大多数生物如何整合复杂和动态的信息。该项目将在美国最多元化的校区之一(均位于新泽西州纽瓦克的罗格斯-纽瓦克和新德里理工大学)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”开源演示工具包，用于试验黏菌运动和决策，以鼓励研究无神经元生物体和其他非传统模式生物体的认知过程。拟议的项目将建立一个全面的实验和理论框架，可用于研究其他无神经元生物体的决策，并与有大脑的动物进行比较，从而增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结合神经生理学和统计物理学的分析工具，将首先研究多头藻细胞质膜收缩振荡在其决策过程中的作用。特别是，将审查来自不同刺激的信息的转移和整合。当可获得的信息有噪音或矛盾时，黏菌决策机制的效率也将受到测试。最后，如果食物总是在山上存在，黏菌的自然正向地趋向性(在重力方向上的运动)是否可以被条件(即，在这里颠倒)将被确定。这将表明粘液霉菌能够进行空间联想学习(这在粘液霉菌中是第一次)，并且它的决策过程能够适应它移动所经过的环境的特征。在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储存库中免费提供。

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.