Plants that can learn and remember?

[BaguaKicksAss]

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/scientists-discover-plants-can-learn-remember.html

 

An interesting addition to the last article we published about the Mimosa plant and memory. The evidence for plant consciousness seems to be stacking more and more each day. How fascinating.

New research from a team of scientists at the University of Western Australia will change the way you think about the difference between plants and animals. Mimosa pundica plants, they found, can learn and remember, despite not having a brain. Those active little fern-like things always did seem sort of smart, though, didn’t they?

With a name that literally means “shy,” the Mimosa pundica is a particularly unique piece of flora, as it responds to touch by folding inward to protect itself from predators. Wondering if this was just a straightforward reflex, the Australian researchers rigged up an apparatus that would drop water on the plant in both high- and low-light environments. Much to their surprise, they found that the plant stopped opening and closing once it learned that the drops weren’t harmful. More impressively, the plants remembered that lesson several weeks after the initial training.

The scientists are unclear on the exact biology of what makes Mimosa pundica plants learn and remember, but they suspect it has something to do with the plants’ calcium-based signally network in their cells. This sophisticated system works not unlike animals’ memory processes, giving the researchers cause to reconsider the difference between plants and animals. It just makes you wonder: Just how smart can plants get? Maybe Lord of the Rings isn’t such a fantasy after all.

Credits: Gizmodo

Categories

ConsciousnessNews

 

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Interesting, but it doesn't actually show consciousness or memory IMO. It's more likely a mechanistic habituation process. The plant isn't conscious of anything or learning anything, it's automatic responses. Of course, as people, when we see these things we immediately think of things like memory because that's what we know.

 

It's like when someone lives with the same smell around them and eventually they stop smelling it - that's not because of learning or memory, it's an automatic physiological process.

 

My theory:

The chemical messengers automatically released in response to damage trigger a feedback loop to the pressure receptors affected by a particular stimulus, lowering the threshold for a response to that stimulus. Since a drop of water doesn't cause damage, that feedback loop isn't triggered so the threshold for a response is raised, eventually meaning that there is no response to that repeated harmless stimulus.

[Apech]

Interesting, but it doesn't actually show consciousness or memory IMO. It's more likely a mechanistic habituation process. The plant isn't conscious of anything or learning anything, it's automatic responses. Of course, as people, when we see these things we immediately think of things like memory because that's what we know.

 

It's like when someone lives with the same smell around them and eventually they stop smelling it - that's not because of learning or memory, it's an automatic physiological process.

 

My theory:

The chemical messengers automatically released in response to damage trigger a feedback loop to the pressure receptors affected by a particular stimulus, lowering the threshold for a response to that stimulus. Since a drop of water doesn't cause damage, that feedback loop isn't triggered so the threshold for a response is raised, eventually meaning that there is no response to that repeated harmless stimulus.

 

 

How would you distinguish between this and memory? What is memory in your view?

[soaring crane]

Nice read. But of course, the most intelligent of all plants is the common cauliflower:

 

[Marblehead]

With a name that literally means “shy,” the Mimosa pundica is a particularly unique piece of flora, as it responds to touch by folding inward to protect itself from predators.

Those things grew at one of the two places I was stationed at in Vietnam. I would sometimes play with one, touch it and watch it close itself then back off and watch it open back up. Then could even feel the heat or energy from my finger because I didn't even have to physically touch it, just get really close and it would start closing just in case.

 

Nature is so beautiful and neat if we take the time to view it up close and personal.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

How would you distinguish between this and memory? What is memory in your view?

Memory is storing knowledge in the mind, if the plant remembers 'that doesn't harm me so I don't need to close'. Memory implies conscious awareness of things and storing that information for later.

 

This is IMHO just automatic biochemical processes. With repeated stimulation, receptors becoming desensitised.

 

Similarly, plants grow towards light not because they are aware of it, but because the growth factors concentrate on the darker side of the stem so that side grows faster, curving the stem towards light sources.

[Apech]

Memory is storing knowledge in the mind, if the plant remembers 'that doesn't harm me so I don't need to close'. Memory implies conscious awareness of things and storing that information for later.

 

Not really because there are unconscious memories and we can recall much more than is readily available to the conscious mind. So the process of memory does not imply any kind of conscious activity but simply the presence of mental imprints.

 

 

 

This is IMHO just automatic biochemical processes. With repeated stimulation, receptors becoming desensitised.

 

This is true as continuous stimulation is no stimulation. This is just something about how nervous systems work.

 

Similarly, plants grow towards light not because they are aware of it, but because the growth factors concentrate on the darker side of the stem so that side grows faster, curving the stem towards light sources.

Awareness occurs on all sorts of levels not just the type that we experience when we say to ourselves that we have had or are having an experience of some kind.

[Marblehead]

Awareness occurs on all sorts of levels not just the type that we experience when we say to ourselves that we have had or are having an experience of some kind.

How did I know you were wanting to go there when you posted your first post? Hehehe.

[Apech]

How did I know you were wanting to go there when you posted your first post? Hehehe.

 

Because you were using extra-sensory perception.

[Formless Tao]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_fly_trap

[GrandmasterP]

Nice read. But of course, the most intelligent of all plants is the common cauliflower:

 

 

Now there's synchronicity at work.

Just read the first fascinating post here and was about to post about cauliflower and here's your post.

I've been pegging the leaves closed over the top of our overwinter caulis.

That helps them heart up and keeps the hearts blanched.

I use wooden spring clip clothes pegs.

Two caulis only in a long row kept throwing off the pegs.

I changed the pegs but every morning up to now for this past week or so those two threw the pegs off.

Today Mrs GMP found some slugs in each of those two caulis.

Just little chaps.

I reckon those two caulis were 'telling us' they had a slug problem.

( They don't now!).

All the others in that row are fine, no slugs.

We've checked.

[Unseen_Abilities]

University of Western Australia? Let me know if you're in the area. A guy I used to train with, Maurizio, owns an Italian Restaurant just down the road - we can go for pizza and then do some kung fu by the river

[Spotless]

There is not a plant alive not being tended to by awareness.

Not a rock.

Not a plastic flower.

Your rug knows you.

[silent thunder]

There is not a plant alive not being tended to by awareness. Not a rock. Not a plastic flower. Your rug knows you.

Echoing This!

[Marblehead]

If that be true then only I and my rug know a couple of my secrets.

[Gerard]

Interesting, but it doesn't actually show consciousness or memory IMO.

 

Are you 100% sure? If you could just see the things I have seen while meditating alone in the rainforest you wouldn't make that statement.