OIST
https://groups.oist.jp/cne/sam-reiter
Title: Wake-like skin patterning and neural activity during octopus sleep
Abstract: While sleeping, many vertebrate groups alternate between at least two sleep stages: rapid eye movement (REM) and slow wave sleep (SWS), in part characterized by wake-like and synchronous brain activity respectively. We will describe neural and behavioral correlates of two stages of sleep in octopuses, marine invertebrates which evolutionarily diverged from vertebrates ~550 MYA and have independently evolved large brains and behavioral sophistication. Octopus ‘active’ sleep bouts interrupt normal ‘quiet’ sleep, and see the animal rapidly transition through a set of brain-controlled skin patterns. Active sleep skin pattern dynamics take the form of pseudo-random transitions over waking skin patterns. In the brain, high-density electrophysiological recordings reveal that the local field potential (LFP) activity during active sleep resembles that of waking. The range of similarities with vertebrates implies that aspects of 2-stage sleep in octopuses may represent convergent features of biological intelligence.