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Recording electrical activity from the brain of behaving octopus

Gutnick, Tamar; Neef, Andreas; Cherninskyi, Andrii; Ziadi-Künzli, Fabienne; Di Cosmo, Anna; Lipp, Hans-Peter; Kuba, Michael J (2023). Recording electrical activity from the brain of behaving octopus. Current Biology, 33(6):1171-1178.e4.

Abstract

Octopuses, which are among the most intelligent invertebrates,1,2,3,4 have no skeleton and eight flexible arms whose sensory and motor activities are at once autonomous and coordinated by a complex central nervous system.5,6,7,8 The octopus brain contains a very large number of neurons, organized into numerous distinct lobes, the functions of which have been proposed based largely on the results of lesioning experiments.9,10,11,12,13 In other species, linking brain activity to behavior is done by implanting electrodes and directly correlating electrical activity with observed animal behavior. However, because the octopus lacks any hard structure to which recording equipment can be anchored, and because it uses its eight flexible arms to remove any foreign object attached to the outside of its body, in vivo recording of electrical activity from untethered, behaving octopuses has thus far not been possible. Here, we describe a novel technique for inserting a portable data logger into the octopus and implanting electrodes into the vertical lobe system, such that brain activity can be recorded for up to 12 h from unanesthetized, untethered octopuses and can be synchronized with simultaneous video recordings of behavior. In the brain activity, we identified several distinct patterns that appeared consistently in all animals. While some resemble activity patterns in mammalian neural tissue, others, such as episodes of 2 Hz, large amplitude oscillations, have not been reported. By providing an experimental platform for recording brain activity in behaving octopuses, our study is a critical step toward understanding how the brain controls behavior in these remarkable animals.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:04 Faculty of Medicine > Institute of Evolutionary Medicine
Dewey Decimal Classification:610 Medicine & health
Scopus Subject Areas:Life Sciences > General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Life Sciences > General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords:brain activity; in vivo electrophysiology; infra-slow oscillations; octopus; octopus behavior; octopus neurophysiology; vertical lobe
Language:English
Date:1 March 2023
Deposited On:22 Nov 2023 15:21
Last Modified:26 Feb 2025 02:43
Publisher:Cell Press (Elsevier)
ISSN:0960-9822
OA Status:Closed
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.006
PubMed ID:36827988
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