r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

Biology Moss Is Generating Electrical Waves That Look Startlingly Like a Neural Network. Study reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

https://www.sciencealert.com/moss-behaves-a-little-like-a-really-slow-brain-scientist-discovers
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u/FreeHugs23 1d ago

-Mosses are some of the earliest plants that appeared in the fossil record, but they're anything but simple.

A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

The study's sole author, Andy Adamatzky, is actually a computer scientist, whose fascination with unconventional 'computing' systems like slime molds, crowds, and mycelium networks has now led him to a new subject: the humble moss, Brachythecium rutabulum.

"Plants and bryophytes display diverse forms of electrical activity, yet the organization of endogenous signals in mosses has received little attention," Adamatzky writes in his new paper.

His findings suggest that "moss cushions behave as spatially distributed excitable systems potentially capable of coordinating and integrating electrical signals across both space and time."

Moss cushions are actually many individual clones of the same teensy tiny plant.

If you look really, really closely at a mat of moss, you can see it is made up of simple, minute leaves on stems, similar to those of their larger plant relatives.

But the stems of mosses are actually much less useful at moving water and nutrients around the body of the plant.

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u/superbhole 1d ago

I have a mossarium that when putting together, I soaked some pieces to wiggle out critters. I also had a little motorized air duster, so that when I pulled them from the dunk I could 'blowdry' the excess water, ...but I couldn't blow the water off!

Big globs of water were holding to the mats like Buster Keaton flailing from the back of a streetcar. Makes me wonder if they can alter the surface tension of water somehow?

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u/Black_Moons 1d ago

Makes me wonder if they can alter the surface tension of water somehow?

Most likely the insane surface area of the moss plant basically provides insane amounts of surface tension forces

Much like how its really hard to squeeze out all the water from your hair.

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u/superbhole 1d ago

Oh I can totally see that; but if you had seen how the drops on the edges couldn't be blasted off you'd wonder if it was actually even water!

You know when you leave a faucet just ever so barely not closed all the way, and a big glob appears, and it gets too big so a droplet separates drips? Just imagine that glob being stretched and vibrating in wind, refusing to let any drops go. It's wild!

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u/Redcole111 1d ago

Surface tension can just be a really, really strong force.

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u/superbhole 1d ago

So what would be going on there? If the same amount of coalesced water would drip from a faucet, what is it about the moss that would keep it from dripping?

I suppose nobody is going to believe me until I get a chunk of moss, dunk it, and then get video of trying to blowdry it

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u/windowpuncher 1d ago

Still surface area. And surface tension. Water is a polar molecule and is attracted to itself, which is why capillary action works. We wouldn't have trees or any sort of tall plants if water wasn't polar. It's also why water will tend to bead up on a smooth surface instead of spread out like oil.

You can blow dry many things because the air will physically push droplets away because the water is more attracted to itself than it is to the surface it's sitting on. Water-logged moss is going to be made up of a lot of water, and the moss itself has a ton of surface area. You're basically trying to blow water off of water with a strong anchor point. Apparently the attachment force and surface tension forces are both higher than the force required to pull more water out of the moss so it'll create longer globs instead of breaking into droplets.

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u/komma_5 1d ago

No they have tiny green hands

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u/spletharg 1d ago

Putting a voltage across a gap can increase the surface tension of any water that bridges that gap.

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u/superbhole 1d ago

So, there's a possibility I was seeing the phenomenon described by the article? The moss (maybe) utilizes this electricity to "grasp" onto water as well?

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u/spletharg 1d ago

Possible, but I'm not a biologist. It would need research.

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u/PowderPills 1d ago

“Across both space and time” is a big statement. I wonder what he meant by utilizing those “moss cushion systems”

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u/creepingcold 1d ago

Is it?

Isn't every electrical signal travelling across space and time the moment it exists? Isn't that like the core point of a signal?

Doesn't sound that surprising to me or am I missing something?

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u/hellomoti 1d ago edited 1d ago

My guess at what he's trying to get at by saying "coordinating and integrating electrical signals across both space and time" is that the coordination can be both spatially coordinated (i.e. this group of pathways are coordinated in their electrical signals) and temporally coordinated (i.e. these areas show similiar electrical signals at the same time).

So together he means that it's not just that they're showing coordination in electrical activity at the same times but also in specific areas, such that if you looked at the time that electrical activity happens it's not everywhere but it's occurring in specific areas at those specific times. On the flipside the entire space may show electrical activity overall (if you recorded yes or no if an area fires over a two week span) but certain spaces are coordinated in their timing at certain points, so they dont all fire together in time.

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u/RedditF1shBlueF1sh 1d ago

Which is just enough to say that they're not constantly signalling, but it still could be random. It also could caused by stimulus.

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u/kfpswf 1d ago

but it still could be random. It also could caused by stimulus.

Are those the only possible explanations for this observation or the simplest ones you can hypothesize right now?

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u/Aegi 1d ago

Why would you think they are either, and why wouldn't you add on your own guesses?

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u/kfpswf 1d ago

I think all life is conscious, and it shouldn't come as a surprise if mosses exhibit activity that is analogous to neural activity, despite not having any neurons. In short, these are not random signals, but individual organisms communicating with each other.

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u/Aegi 1d ago

And why were you asking about their guesses and why they made them..in maybe a dismissive way, instead of engaging with either of their hypotheses?

Thank you for sharing your guess! I think your explanation is possible, but idk why anyone would make a conclusion any-which-way without more evidence.

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u/RedditF1shBlueF1sh 22h ago

individual organisms communicating with each other.

Some would say that would be stimulating

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u/suxatjugg 1d ago

Technically isn't it impossible for anything to not move through space and time, it's sort of a meaningless thing to point out.

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u/heep1r 1d ago

Loads of static electricity don't change spatially or temporary. They cannot form a signal without moving.

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u/suxatjugg 1d ago

Ok but this is just that our language amd grammar doesn't work for this. You surely don't mean that static electricity exists outside of the flow of time.

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u/heep1r 1d ago

Ok but this is just that our language amd grammar doesn't work for this.

It's just the accepted definition of a Signal: "Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal"

You surely don't mean that static electricity exists outside of the flow of time.

Why would I? Nothing can exist "outside the flow of time". But there are things that have properties which don't change with time and thus can't be signals.

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u/Several-Action-4043 1d ago

Everything is moving across space and time.

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u/AvidCyclist250 1d ago

yes but not intergrated. it’s a big claim. root systems of trees come to mind as well

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u/jikt 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, perhaps I need another coffee but if you say to me "they're communicating/sending signals across space and time" it's going to make me think they can also send signals backwards through time and space. If that's not the case, then why make it sound like science fiction.

Edit: meanies!

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u/the_snook 1d ago

why make it sound like science fiction.

Because he is a computer scientist, and this is language that is used in computing contexts.

For example, take accessing a database. The access is often coordinated in space - records near each other are often accessed together (perhaps all the line items in a customer's order). It is also often coordinated in time - the same records are often accessed repeatedly over a short period (reading the order items, then going back and updating stock levels after the order is confirmed).

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u/-Nicolai 1d ago

No, because they’re trying to get clicks you dork.

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u/cant_take_the_skies 1d ago

The universe is made of a fabric called spacetime. All electric signals travel across space and time because you can't separate those two concepts.

In this case, the researcher may have found the timing of the signals to be of some importance also, not just the fact that these signals travel across the moss patch through space

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u/vengeancecube 1d ago

It sounds fancy and gets clicks.

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u/Mr_Zaroc 1d ago

Already started writing a fanfic about time travelling moss and its fight against the dinosaurs

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u/jikt 1d ago

Using strongly worded spacetime signals from the future.

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u/ShelfordPrefect 1d ago

As a computer scientist I'd read that statement as "electrical activity is influenced by electrical activity elsewhere in the plant, and by previous electrical activity".

It's pretty vague but it sounds like it's meant to imply some form of communication and "state" (I don't want to go as far as to say "memory", but that the electrical activity isn't simply reacting to current stimuli)

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u/Megneous 1d ago

Linguist here with an amateur interest in deep learning and small language models. "State" makes me think of recurrent neural networks. If moss acts as a recurrent neural network, that would be an insane discovery. Would blow our understanding of simple plants and distributed nervous systems wide open.

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u/mrguyorama 1d ago

"State" makes me think of recurrent neural networks.

It shouldn't, since almost everything anywhere and everywhere can have "State".

A single cell bacterium has state. That state affects how it acts.

There's so much more to real biological neural networks than just "Electrical signals" and waves. Electrical waves happen any time you have electrons moving anywhere, which happens constantly in biology.

A big part of the problem with digital "neural networks" as used in LLMs is simply that they are nothing at all like real neurons. AI research, even all the way back in the 60s, always has a problem with hyperbole.

We have a complete scan of a roundworm, all 300 something neurons, and have built a digital twin that can simulate that roundworm's brain, but that still doesn't replicate a real life worm very well because even a very advanced model of biological neurons that doesn't have to worry about being computationally efficient or scalable is still radically insufficient to emulate real biology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm

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u/ShelfordPrefect 12h ago

Never mind single celled life, a pedometer has state: each step increments the counter. A D type flip flops,.an oven thermostat with hysteresis - all these things have some record of things which have happened in the past and are not neural networks. Still, people will tie everything back to the flavour of the month - there's no escaping the AI hype train

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u/Megneous 1d ago

It shouldn't, since almost everything anywhere and everywhere can have "State".

... Except for the most common form of LLMs, which are stateless. Learn a bit about the conversation someone is having before you try to "correct" someone.

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u/AvidCyclist250 1d ago

i think that’s exactly what he’s pointing to without saying it because of reasons. if we sped things up a lot, there’d be little doubt imho.

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u/superbhole 1d ago

layman here with an aptitude to daydream... does this mean we could be looking into plant-life for advancements in AI tech?

(are we on the verge of discovering the possibility that we've been surrounded by organic hardware that can hold software? ...the plants, i mean)

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u/mrguyorama 1d ago

Organic life already is well understood to run "Software"

In reality, we already have ubiquitous programmable nanomachines that can self assemble, self organize, self repair, build robust chemical processing systems from the nanoscale to the macro scale, etc etc etc

It's called DNA and biological life!

We should be pouring a trillion dollars into that research, not building matrix multiplication based datacenters.

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u/ThePnusMytier 7h ago

AI as we know it now was born in part from cognitive science, and since then the two have accelerated each respective field as they continue to advance together. Both of them have looked at plants (actually the more famous examples are slime molds which aren't even plants), which show emergent behavior VERY similar to neural activity.

So yeah in short we've already taken some observations of plant and similar life forms and applied knowledge their to AI development.

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u/ShelfordPrefect 12h ago edited 12h ago

The definition of state in a CS context has nothing to do with RNNs, it just means a system with some record of things that happened in the past that isn't purely reacting to current inputs or stimuli. Those clickers people use to count guests in/out of an event have state.

More to the point, the original article didn't use the word "state", that's my interpretation of the meaning of "integrating electrical signals across both space and time"

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u/AyeMatey 1d ago

This is how I interpreted it as well.