#cephalopod intelligence

[hasfeelings]

Octopuses may be so terrifyingly smart because they share humans' genes for intelligence

Genetic sequences called transposons help regulate learning.

[cephalogodess]

As you guys probably know, I’ve been working on applications for PhD programs in neuroscience and biology. My dream is to study comparative neuroscience and prove animals are intelligent in ways we have never imagined because of our human biases. I would especially love to study cephalopod cognition. I just got a binder to organize the publications of various faculty I’d like to work with and I decorated it with clippings from magazines and my favorite books to inspire me to keep working on these applications and working towards my future. I’m SO proud of how the collages turned out, I really feel they completely represent my scientific interests. These are the two sides of my binder. :) 

[cephalogodess]

Ahhh look at the two textbooks I just got in the mail!!!!! I've wanted them for years, the price finally went down enough for me to afford them. So excited. Cephalopod cognition is exactly what I want to research in grad school and beyond. The book on behavior was written by Dr. Hanlon at Brown & I'm applying to Brown's bio phd program for the (albeit very slight) chance to work with him!

[hasfeelings]

Another Path to Intelligence

Octopus brains are nothing like ours—yet we have much in common.

Octopus brains are not situated, like ours, in their heads; rather, they are decentralized, with brains that extend throughout their bodies and into their limbs. Each of their arms contains bundles of neurons that act as independent minds, allowing them to move about and react of their own accord, unfettered by central control. Octopuses are a con­federation of intelligent parts, which means their awareness, as well as their thinking, occurs in ways which are radically different to our own.

Perhaps one of the fullest expressions of this difference is to be found, not in the work of scientists, but in a novel. In his book Children of Time, science-fiction writer Adrien Tchaikovsky conceptualizes octopus intelligence as a kind of multi­threaded processing system. For the space­faring octopuses in Children of Time, their awareness—their consciousness—is tripartite. Their higher functions, which Tchaikovsky calls the “crown,” are embedded in their head-­brain, but their “reach,” the “arm­-driven undermind,” is capable of solving prob­lems independently—sourcing food, opening locks, fighting, or fleeing from danger. Meanwhile, a third mode of thinking and communicat­ing, the “guise,” controls the strobing and spotting of the octopuses’ “skin, ‘the chalkboard of the brain,’” where it doodles its thoughts from moment to moment. In this way, the octopuses freewheel through space, constructing ships, habitats, and whole societies which owe as much to bursts of emotion, flights of fancy, acts of curiosity and bore­dom, as they do to conscious intent. Tchaikovsky’s octopuses are lively, frantic, bored, creative, distracted, and poetic—all at the same time: a product of the constant dialogue and conflict within their own nervous systems. As Tchaikovsky tells it, octopuses are multiple intel­ligences in singular bodies.

[...]

The intelligence of the octopus is one such flower. As Godfrey­-Smith puts it, “Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals.” Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evo­lution built minds twice over.” If twice, then likely many more.