Lærum við eins og sniglar?

UCLA Neuroscientist Gains Insights Into Human Brain From Study Of Marine Snail

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"Human brains have many more neurons than the Aplysia's, but it doesn't look like there is any difference on a molecular or synaptic level.

"When this animal learns," Glanzman said, "many changes take place in its nervous system. I want to understand what causes these changes for certain forms of learning; I want to understand everything there is to understand. This knowledge will inform us about the kinds of changes that take place in our brains when we learn."

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The marine snail, which is substantially larger than its garden-variety counterpart, has approximately 20,000 neurons in its central nervous system; humans have approximately one trillion. Glanzman has a good understanding of the functions of approximately 1,000 of the neurons. The marine snail is native to California, living in tidal waters off the coast.

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What does the marine snail learn?

"The marine snail has to process information about its environment, and it has to make associations between different stimuli, just as we do," Glanzman said. "It is capable of learning when an environment is safe and when it is not, and of understanding the danger posed by a predator."

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"Our work implies that the brain mechanisms for forming these kinds of associations might be extremely similar in snails and higher organisms. People may think invertebrates are not very sophisticated, but we don't appreciate just how complicated their nervous systems are, and how complex their behaviors are. We don't fully understand even very simple kinds of learning in these animals."