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SUMMARY:Cognition without neurons: Mathematical models of decentralized in
 telligence.
DTSTART:20261005T133000Z
DTEND:20261005T153000Z
DTSTAMP:20261002T182300Z
UID:indico-event-9857@indico.fysik.su.se
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Linnéa Gyllingberg (KTH Department of Computational
  Science and Technology)\n\nHow can simple organisms lacking nervous syste
 ms encode and transmit environmental signals to generate complex\, adaptiv
 e behaviours? Most life on Earth is neuronless\, and organisms could sense
 \, respond\, and adapt to their environment long before nervous systems ev
 olved. Yet research on intelligence has largely focused on humans\, brains
 \, and neuron-inspired artificial systems. This raises a fundamental quest
 ion: which principles of biological information processing are specific to
  nervous systems\, and which are shared more broadly across living systems
 ?\nIn this presentation\, I will introduce the study of non-neural cogniti
 on and describe how mathematical models can help us understand decentraliz
 ed intelligence\, particularly how local interactions generate coordinated
  and intelligent-like behaviour without global information or central cont
 rol. I will focus on the unicellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum. Re
 markably\, despite being a single giant cell\, Physarum displays a wide ra
 nge of adaptive behaviours\, including chemotaxis\, adaptive network forma
 tion\, and balancing exploration and exploitation in a two-armed bandit ta
 sk. To explain how such different behaviours can arise\, I will present ou
 r mechanochemical framework linking intracellular calcium dynamics to orga
 nism-scale behaviour across spatial and temporal scales. Rather than requi
 ring a separate mechanism for each behaviour\, the model shows how they ca
 n all emerge through local modulation of self-sustained calcium oscillatio
 ns\, coupled by diffusion\, which are translated into mechanical forces. O
 ur work provides a physically grounded mechanism for information processin
 g in non-neural organisms and offers insight into how coordinated and adap
 tive behaviour may have been achieved before nervous systems evolved.\n \
 nZoom link: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/622224375\n\nhttps://in
 dico.fysik.su.se/event/9857/
LOCATION:Albano Building 3
URL:https://indico.fysik.su.se/event/9857/
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