Kanizsa illusory contours appearing in the plasmodium pattern of <i>Physarumpolycephalum</i>

The plasmodium of <i>Physarum polycephalum</i> is often used in the implementation of non-linear computation to solve optimization problems, and this organismal feature was not used in this analysis to compute perception and/or sensation in humans. In this paper, we focused on the Kanizs...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Iori eTani, Masaki eYamachiyo, Tomohiro eShirakawa, Yukio Pegio Gunji
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-02-01
Series:Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology
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Online Access:http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fcimb.2014.00010/full
Description
Summary:The plasmodium of <i>Physarum polycephalum</i> is often used in the implementation of non-linear computation to solve optimization problems, and this organismal feature was not used in this analysis to compute perception and/or sensation in humans. In this paper, we focused on the Kanizsa illusion, which is a well-known visual illusion resulting from the differentiation-integration of the visual field, and compared the illusion with the adaptive network in the plasmodium of <i>P. polycephalum</i>. We demonstrated that the network pattern mimicking the Kanizsa illusion can be produced by an asynchronous automata-fashioned model of the foraging slime mold and by the real plasmodia of <i>P. polycephalum</i>. Because the protoplasm of the plasmodium is transported depending on both local and global computation, it may contain differentiation-integration processes. In this sense, we can extend the idea of perception and computation.
ISSN:2235-2988