The neurophysiological basis of motor function and learning and memory in the octopus, an animal with a unique ‘embodiment’

The neurobiology of the octopus cannot be analyzed without considering its special morphology. I will start my talk by describing octopus ‘embodiment’. The “… embodied view suggests that the actual behavior emerges from the interactions dynamics of agent and environment through a continuous and dynamic interplay of physical and information processes” (Pfeifer et al., 2007). The octopus with its soft, flexible body and its large variety of active behaviors driven by a huge amount of sensory information is a special test-case for assessing this view in a biological system. I will review the motor control strategies that have evolved in the octopus to cope with this special morphology, which we are studying together with Tamar Flash. These results include a unique distribution of control and computational labor between the central and an elaborated peripheral nervous system. Continuing with this idea, I will show how a comparative, physiological analysis of learning and memory mechanisms in the octopus and cuttlefish revealed dichotomous differences in the site of plasticity in a simple fan-out fan-in network. The differences suggest the importance ‘self-organizational’ mechanisms in establishing the properties of a neural network to fit a specific embodiment.