Amoebae Exhibit Brainless Intelligence

[RoboGuy]

How often have you wonder if it was possible to make a robot that couldmatch the intelligence of an insect or even an amoeba? This is a tallorder for even the most advanced robots in the world today and newresearch by AtsushiTero and Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the Hokkaido University Lab forCellular Informatics reminds us just how smart even a brainless singlecelled animal can be. There latest researchshows that amoebae can be trained to anticipate environmental changes,exhibiting a Pavlovian-like responses even though they have no brain ornervous system.Unfortunately, their paper appeared in a closed journal that restrictsviewing and distribution, so you'll have to be contentviewing the abstractfor now (unless you want to part with $25). The same research group hasbeen studying other intelligent, autonomous behaviors that emergethrough self-organization in single celled animals; for example their paper(PDF format) showing that slime mold cells use an algorithm fornavigation of mazes that beats Dijkstra'salgorithm.

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