Learn without having a brain | Science and Technology News (Amazings® / NCYT®)

2023-09-26 15:45:09

How is it possible that an animal that only has a thousand nerve cells and that lacks a centralized organ that we can call the brain, is capable of learning new things, for example not to make the same mistake again?

Jellyfish, box jellyfish (also known as sea wasps or cubozoans) and their closest evolutionary relatives make up the phylum cnidaria. Cnidarians, which have fairly simple nervous systems and lack a centralized brain, are considered the first living animals to develop nervous systems. Despite their apparent limitations, they continue to exist after more than 500 million years.

For more than a decade, neurobiologist Anders Garm, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, has been researching box jellyfish, which are among the most venomous creatures in the world. But these animals are also interesting for another reason: it turns out that they are not as simple as previously believed. And this, discovered in a recent study, has called into question ideas until now considered unquestionable about what simple nervous systems cannot do.

It was previously assumed that animals of this kind could only handle the simplest forms of learning.

The new study reveals instead that they have a much more refined learning capacity and that they can, in fact, learn from their mistakes. In other words, after a mistake, they are capable of modifying their behavior so as not to make it again.

The study is the work of an international team including, among others, Garm and Jan Bielecki from the University of Kiel in Germany. The species investigated was Tripedalia cystophora.

Una cubomedusa. (Photo: Jan Bielecki)

Researchers have proven that box jellyfish have the capacity for associative learning. And they learn almost as quickly as animals more advanced than them, such as fruit flies and mice.

The study is titled “Associative learning in the box jellyfish Tripedalia Cystophora”. And it has been published in the academic journal Current Biology. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)