Worms Discovered Can Make Complex Decisions

Every day, new information emerges about the brain, which has a fascinating working principle and still holds many secrets about how it works. Every new research that scientists do on the brain makes us think of the brain. to understand how it works takes it one step closer.

How much knowledge about how the brain works is naturally needed to perform some functions. to brain matter It also shows what we need. A new study on worms published in Current Biology make complex decisions It offers new clues as to how many neurons, or nerve cells, we need for this.

The number of neurons required to make complex decisions may only be 302

Number of neurons required to make difficult decisions only 302 looks like it might. At the very least, a predatory worm that relies on its ability to bite to eat its prey or defend its food source. Pristionchus pacificusAccording to the results of a study focusing on , this may be the case.

Instead of looking directly at neurons and cell connections for signs of decision-making, the researchers decided to examine the decision-making process on this worm species, instead looking at the behavior of P. pacificus, especially its biting abilities when faced with different types of threats. how you prefer to use focused.

During the study, the team determined that P. pacificus is both prey and competitor, another worm species, Caenorhabditis elegans, which is about to bite to eat or bite to deter. two different strategies observed its use. Accordingly, P. pacificus, which prefers to bite to kill a larval C. elegans; against when it was an adult C. elegans, it showed a tendency to bite to keep it away from food sources. This is a strategy change and a conscious choice It was little proof.

pacificus worms can determine where they lay their eggs and their behavior when there is a bacterial food source nearby. how it changed The observing research team thus concluded that bite attacks on adult C. elegans were not an unsuccessful attempt to kill, but rather merely killed them. a strategy designed to remove revealed that.

This research could play an important role in the development of artificial intelligence

While it has been known and now a common fact that vertebrates make such decisions for years, worms do not understand the pros, cons and cons of certain actions in this way. thinking about the consequences He was not known to have enough brain power to strategize and make complex decisions.

on the subject “Scientists have always assumed that worms were simple – we always thought that when P. pacificus bites, there is always a single predatory purpose behind it” Neuroscientist Kathleen Quach of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, “In fact, P. pacificus is versatile and diverse. to achieve long-term goals can use the same action, namely biting C. elegans. I was surprised to find that P. pacificus could turn what seemed like a failed hunting into successful and targeted territoriality.” uses expressions.

Peoples 86 billion When we consider how many neurons it has, the 302 neurons of P. pacificus may sound like an extremely small number. But from a biological point of view, this means that the underlying decision-making mechanism is a not-so-complex code. Therefore, this research is aimed at teaching a computer software to make independent decisions with as few programs and neural network as possible, i.e. in the development of artificial intelligence may even play an important role.

“Even simple systems like worms have different strategies, and you can choose between these strategies and decide what to do in a given situation. better for themselves They may decide that Sreekanth Chalasani, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, said: “It’s like people making these decisions in more complex systems serves as a framework for understanding how it is received” uses expressions.