Slime mould foraging behaviour as optically coupled logical operations

Abstract

Physarum polycephalum is a macroscopic plasmodial slime mould whose apparently ‘intelligent’ behaviour patterns may be interpreted as computation. We employ plasmodial phototactic responses to construct laboratory prototypes of NOT and NAND logical gates with electrical inputs/outputs and optical coupling in which the slime mould plays dual roles of computing device and electrical conductor. Slime mould logical gates are fault tolerant and resettable. The results presented here demonstrate the malleability and resilience of biological systems and highlight how the innate behaviour patterns of living substrates may be used to implement useful computation.

Keywords:

• Physarum polycephalum
• slime mould
• photoavoidance
• logic gate

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the EU Commission seventh Framework Program. The authors declare no conflict of interest.