#DISKTRACKER ALTERNATIVE HOW TO#

When most people think of a nervous system, they think of a single brain sending out messages to move our arms and legs, then gathering information back to process everything we touch, see or hear. An octopus has about 500 million neurons in its body, two-thirds of which are distributed amongst its limbs.įor an octopus, though, this process is much more complicated.Įach arm of an octopus is able to control itself semi-independently from the central brain. This means that there are about 40 million neurons in each tentacle. That’s more than two times the number of neurons the average frog has in its entire body! An experiment conducted by German Sumbre et al. showed that even when a disconnected arm was electrically stimulated, it would still move in the same basic patterns of a tentacle being controlled naturally by an octopus. The arm even adapted its movement patterns the same way a still-connected tentacle did when the arm’s environment and initial posture were changed.Īn experiment shows that an electrically stimulated octopus arm (right), when detached from its central nervous system, will still move in the same basic patterns as an arm naturally controlled by an octopus (left). So how does this partially de-centralized nervous system work? The octopus does, in fact, have a central brain located between its eyes containing about 180 million neurons. This is the part of the nervous system that determines what the octopus wants or needs, such as if it needs to search for food. These are sent as messages through groupings of neurons.

Commands like “search for food” are then received by each of the tentacles, who all have their own smaller, independent brains.

#DISKTRACKER ALTERNATIVE HOW TO#

With these commands in mind, each tentacle gathers its own sensory and position data, processes it, and then issues its own commands on how to move by stiffening or relaxing different parts of the arm, all without consulting the central brain upstairs. As the tentacle moves, it keeps collecting and processing sensory information, and any relevant information, such as the location of food, gets sent back to the central brain to make larger decisions. There is still a lot left unknown about how exactly an octopus’ nervous system functions.

Disktracker alternative