Navigation Links
Living fossils have long- and short-term memory

Nautiloids are the sole surviving family of externally-shelled cephalopods that thrived in the tropical oceans 450150 million years ago. However, in the intervening years their modern soft bodied relatives dumped the shell and developed complex central nervous systems; which makes Nautilus ideally suited to discover the evolutionary pathways that led to the development of the complex coleoid [soft bodied cephalopod] brains say Robyn Crook and Jennifer Basil. Knowing that the simple Nautilus brain lacks the structures required for memory in more sophisticated cephalopods, Crook and Basil decided to test the living fossils memory.

Training Nautilus pompilus to associate the smell of food with a blue light, the cephalopods eventually learned to respond to a flash of blue light by extending their tentacles. Then the scientists tested the cephalopods memories with a flash of light 3min, 30min, 1h, 6h, 12h and 24h after training. Amazingly, Nautilus remembered their training for up to an hour before the memory was lost, but then the memory returned 6h later, lasting up to 24h. Nautilus has both short and long term memory, just like modern cephalopods, despite lacking the same brain structures.

Crook and Basil are optimistic that the unsophisticated Nautilus brain could teach us how modern cephalopod brains evolved.


Contact: Dr. Robyn Cook
The Company of Biologists

Page: 1

Related biology news :

2. Worlds oldest living tree discovered in Sweden
3. Novel living system recreates predator-prey interaction
4. Harvard researchers publish MRI images of genes in action in the living brain
5. Researchers visualize complex pigment mixtures in living cells
6. Krill discovered living in the Antarctic abyss
7. Stanford researchers say living corals thousands of years old hold clues to past climate changes
8. Captive carnivores not up to wild living
9. New technique captures chemical reactions in a single living cell at unprecedented resolution
10. New technology illuminates protein interactions in living cells
11. Researchers examine closest living relative to primates
Post Your Comments:
Breaking Biology News(10 mins):
Breaking Biology Technology: