> In much the same way that a blindfolded person on a trampoline can sense if other people are on it, TRP channels help the slime mold detect faraway objects.
This is as detailed a description as the article gives in how they detect objects? This explanation does not seem very helpful since I assume the glass disks were not jumping up and down. Is there any more information available on how they sense?
I only glanced at it, but noticed that they hypothesized that the organism uses mechanosensation involving rhythmic pulling on the substrate and interpretation of changes in things like tension, compression or mechanical strain.
> Physarum is widely known to grow in a pulsatile manner, which consists of a forward
growth phase and a reverse streaming phase during which the cytoplasm is retracted away from the growth regions (Figure 8A). We have observed that this oscillation is critical for Physarum mechanosensation and that interrupting it by changing the substrate stiffness (Figure 4) or interfering with the oscillations (Figure 6) prevents accurate decision making. Thus, we propose a theoretical model of Physarum navigation where this oscillatory behavior acts as a sample-and- integrate function (Figure 8B): the growth regions sample the environment during the growth phase, optimize the direction of the network tubes during the reverse streaming phase by inducing internal tension in the Physarum network which then aligns future growth of the growth regions.
So basically the slime mold pulls back on the substrate and feels for strain gradients.
Today is Sci-Hub anniversary the project is 10 years old!
I'm going to publish 2,337,229 new articles to celebrate the date. They will be available on the website in a few hours (how about the lawsuit in India you may ask: our lawyers say that restriction is expired already)
An interesting related concept is Mogees [0] that converts any surface to a musical instrument using a contact microphone. The initial underlying theory is described in the thesis of Bruno Zamberlin [1], where he describes in chapter 4 a work with Carmine Emanuele Cella where a piezo sensor is used to convert the vibrations on any physical object into musical sound.
There’s an iOS app called Impaktor that gives similar results with the phone’s mic instead of a contact mic. So not as nuanced, but great for $5. (You will need headphones.)
The experiment happened over a day, so lots of time for environmental vibrations (sound, seismic activity) to paint a subtle picture of the immediate surroundings.
This is as detailed a description as the article gives in how they detect objects? This explanation does not seem very helpful since I assume the glass disks were not jumping up and down. Is there any more information available on how they sense?