Manila Bulletin

THE OCTOPUS’ NERVOUS SYSTEM

Octopuses are smart and unique creatures who happen to be full of surprises. You might think that the Octopus is just like any animal with a single brain that controls everything else. But, its distinctive body structure with eight long and flexible arms would make a single nervous system inefficient in processing motor and sensory information necessary for their natural behavior and survival. As a result, the nervous system of an Octopus is spread out into three main parts: the brain, the optic lobes, and the arm nervous system, as explained by Carls-diamante Sidney in a 2022 article published in the journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. According to Dr. Binyamin Hochner in a 2012 article published in the journal Current Biology, the Octopus’ nervous system is “highly distributed, and typically divided along anatomical lines into components with considerable functional autonomy.” The arm nervous system contains most of the neurons of an Octopus, making them highly sensitive and flexible at the same time. When the Octopus is exposed to stimuli, the arm nervous system mostly processes the information as the Octopus decides what to do. The rest of the nervous system is responsible for learning and processing sensory information.

Inchordate

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2023-03-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://manilabulletin.pressreader.com/article/281586654808016

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