Department of Neurobiology, Institute of Life Sciences, Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, Israel.
Curr Biol. 2011 Mar 22;21(6):460-2. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.052.
Octopuses are intelligent, soft-bodied animals with keen senses that perform reliably in a variety of visual and tactile learning tasks. However, researchers have found them disappointing in that they consistently fail in operant tasks that require them to combine central nervous system reward information with visual and peripheral knowledge of the location of their arms. Wells claimed that in order to filter and integrate an abundance of multisensory inputs that might inform the animal of the position of a single arm, octopuses would need an exceptional computing mechanism, and "There is no evidence that such a system exists in Octopus, or in any other soft bodied animal." Recent electrophysiological experiments, which found no clear somatotopic organization in the higher motor centers, support this claim. We developed a three-choice maze that required an octopus to use a single arm to reach a visually marked goal compartment. Using this operant task, we show for the first time that Octopus vulgaris is capable of guiding a single arm in a complex movement to a location. Thus, we claim that octopuses can combine peripheral arm location information with visual input to control goal-directed complex movements.
章鱼是一种聪明的软体动物，具有敏锐的感觉，可以可靠地完成各种视觉和触觉学习任务。然而，研究人员发现它们在操作性任务中表现不佳，因为它们始终无法将中枢神经系统的奖励信息与手臂位置的视觉和周边知识结合起来。威尔斯声称，为了过滤和整合大量可能告知动物单臂位置的多感觉输入，章鱼将需要一个特殊的计算机制，“没有证据表明章鱼或任何其他软体动物中存在这样的系统。”最近的电生理学实验发现，高等运动中心没有明显的躯体定位组织，这支持了这一说法。我们开发了一个三选一的迷宫，要求章鱼用一只手臂到达一个视觉标记的目标隔间。使用这个操作性任务，我们首次表明，普通章鱼能够引导一只手臂进行复杂的运动到达一个位置。因此，我们声称章鱼可以将手臂位置的周边信息与视觉输入结合起来，控制目标导向的复杂运动。
