14 DAY TRIAL // While an octopus is not generally regarded as being the most clever animal on the planet, its brain is looked at with respect by scientists. One simple reason for this is the fact that it can control eight limbs flawlessly, in very much the same way we control four. This trait that octopuses have is of great aid to researchers seeking to construct the next generation of highly flexible robots, which could have a lot to learn from how the animal performs its daily routines, Wired reports.
The main difference that separates the human and the octopus brain resides in how body-part control is alloted in the motor cortex. While we have separate regions controlling the arms and legs, the octopus has several areas of the brain that control different limbs at different times. The motor cortex is therefore just as flexible, if not even more, than the rest of the body. The most difficult thing for the animals to do is not to control their eight limbs at once, but to ensure that the correct one of the never-ending movement possibilities is selected at all times, researchers say.
“We think, because of the complexity of the octopus body and its variability, that it has another way of organizing its control system. That’s what we find in this study. It’s suited to a structure with many more degrees of freedom than our own body, which is constructed around a segmented skeletal structure with few degrees of freedom,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem neurobiologist Benny Hochner explains the results. The expert is also the author of a new research paper detailing the find, published in the September 17th issue of the scientific journal Current Biology.
The most amazing discovery that the team made was the fact that the octopus' brain didn't seem to be in total control of the limbs' movements. In other words, the cortex just sends a general plan of action to each individual arm, which then proceeds to moving on commands issued specifically for it, as if each of them had its own spinal cord. Understanding this complex and mind-boggling mechanism is of great importance for the field of robotics. Future machines will be operating inside our bodies, and will be rescuing victims after disasters, so they need the utmost freedom of movement possible.
“The idea is to draw inspiration from biology to answer the question of how to generate movement in a flexible structure, and how to control this with the nervous system. The networks are embedded in one another. The system is remodeled according to stimulation. It’s more dynamic, rather than strictly organized,” the expert adds.
“This is very important for robotics. If you build a robot with many degrees of freedom, it becomes very difficult to control. We know that some movements are controlled peripherally, some parameters are set by the brain, and we will do the same thing in our robots,” Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies biomedical engineer Cecilia Laschi, who has not been part of the new investigation, concludes.