You might be amused by the researchers' bafflement about their
findings for octopus lcomotion
.
Here’s the relevant paragraph, from the middle of the short article:
--------quote-------
Neuroscientist Binyamin Hochner, the project’s principal
investigator, says the results suggest that the octopus brain sends
out high-level, goal-oriented commands, but leaves the details of
movement execution to neurons in each of the arms — which together
contain about two-thirds of the animal’s 500 million neurons.
Interesting article! Here’s another choice quote from the story:
“Dyhr
[a neuroscientist from the University of Washington commenting on the study] says that, in octopuses, a weak underlying template for crawling motion might be obscured by decisions that the animals make on the fly in response to sensory feedback from the environment.”
Decisions made on the fly, in response to sensory feedback. Imagine that!
Dyhr was finding the whole thing pretty surprising, because there didn’t seem to be evidence of any “strong pattern of coordination.” He put it this way: " A
basic motor program to coordinate the eight arms would be one way of simplifying the nervous system’s task."
It’s pretty hard for people to shake the idea that the brain is in the business of issuing motor commands to the muscles to control behavior.
"Whereas the human arm is divided into two main segments for its
control � the upper and lower arm � the joint-less octopus arm offers
many more degrees of freedom."
Thanks for posting this, Martin.
This is actually surprisingly helpful. That I didn't think come to
think of it before. With a jointless arm you don't have the
convenience of describing its movements in terms of "joint angles".
This forces one, at least briefly, to consider alternative ways of
thinking about how we are able to perceive the movements of the arms
in space.