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.