2023-07-06 14:15:47
Octopuses are very intelligent, to the point that in some details their behavior resembles that of humans. Recent research has explored the question of whether their brains, despite how different they are from humans, have a sleep pattern similar to that of humans and other higher mammals.
Like humans, octopuses go through two phases of sleep: a calm one and an active one like the REM phase (characterized by rapid eye movements) of mammals. But could this mean that octopuses dream?
When octopuses sleep, their quiet periods of torpor are interrupted by brief bursts of frenetic activity. Her arms and eyes flutter, her breathing quickens, and her skin flashes with vibrant colors. The ability of octopuses to quickly change the color of their skin offers in this case an extra parameter to investigate what may be going through the mind of the animal at such moments.
Now, a team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan and the University of Washington in the US city of Seattle have taken a closer look at brain activity and the pattern of skin changes in octopuses of the species Octopus laqueus. during this active sleep period.
The team includes, among others, Aditi Pophale and Sam Reiter from OIST, and Leenoy Meshulam from the University of Washington.
An octopus of the species Octopus laqueus sleeping. (Photo: Keishu Asada (OIST))
The authors of the study have discovered that both the brain activity and the pattern of skin changes exhibited by the octopuses studied in this agitated phase of sleep are very similar to those they present when they are awake. In mammals, activity similar to being awake occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is the phase in which most dreams occur.
The results of the study therefore indicate that there are striking similarities between the sleep behavior of octopuses and that of humans, and provide intriguing insights into the origin and function of sleep.
All animals seem to show some form of sleep, even simple animals like jellyfish and fruit flies. However, for a long time the only animals in which this alternation between two sleep phases was known have been vertebrates.
The fact that two-stage sleep has evolved independently in beings such as octopuses that are not close evolutionary relatives of humans at all and that possess brain structures that, while large, are completely different from those of vertebrates, suggests that having an active phase of sleep, similar to being awake, that is, in which the individual dreams, may be a universal characteristic of complex cognition.
The study is titled “Wake-like skin patterning and neural activity during octopus sleep”. And it has been published in the academic journal Nature. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
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