Octopus Experience

During my time with the Salish Seas program, I had the opportunity to meet with many astounding scientists. One such scientist is Dominic Sivitilli. Dominic is an UW doctoral student in behavioral neuroscience and he is currently doing research on octopus. His research focuses on octopus behavior and neurological function.

During his presentation, I learned a lot about the octopus nervous system. The octopus brain is widely different from the human brain. Firstly, the octopus nervous system is highly diffused. The octopus neurons are spread out all over the body in three main structures: the central brain, the optic lobes, and the tentacles.

The octopus has an "ascending recruitment model". If the octopus

arms feel an object, they can recruit other arms directly to explore it. Then, they can give the central brain a very basic idea of the environment. If the object were to be a crab, the central brain could give the arms a general behavioral command to grab and eat the crab. The arms would figure out the details of how to grab the crab on their own.

After the presentation, I was very intrigued about Dominic's research and I got the opportunity to do an experiment in his lab. Another student and I did a research project about how octopuses react to different environment. We learned a lot about octopuses and had a lot of fun!

I will post another blog with more detail about our research soon!