Even brainless animals can learn

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The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis therefore has a simple form of memory, the University of Freiburg said on Tuesday.

To do this, the researchers performed tests on animals with stimuli consisting of light and electricity. Some sea anemones were exposed to light and current simultaneously, while in others the pulses were staggered so that no correlation could be identified between the two stimuli.

And indeed, animals have responded to training. Over time, anemones, in which two pulses were used simultaneously, contracted their bodies with the use of only the light pulse. They had learned that the appearance of light was accompanied by an electrical stimulus – classical conditioning.

Exactly how brainless animals learn is unclear. “Very little is known about how the learning process is organized in animals with seemingly simple neural networks. We hypothesize that some synapses are also strengthened in them,” study leader Simon Sprecher said in a statement from the university.

According to Sprecher, the findings also raise the question of how and when learning arose during evolution. “The first ancestors of all animals with brains lived about 560 million years ago. Those with a neural network already existed 100 to 150 million years ago,” Sprecher said. Perhaps animals that can learn have been around longer than previously thought. (SDA)

Source : Blick