Mushroom essence? Someone inserted an electrode into the mushroom and intercepted a mushroom language
2022-04-26
You may have heard such a story about mushrooms. A mental patient likes to squat in a damp corner with an umbrella and remain silent all year round. Many doctors didn't understand why he insisted on holding an umbrella until one day a psychologist followed his example and squatted next to him. The patient slowly came over and asked: are you a mushroom, too? The mushroom played by the umbrella speaks and opens the patient's psychological defense against the doctor. But recently, a group of scientists from the UK were surprised to find that those real mushrooms also seem to have their own language! Besides talking, they also seem to participate in the game Who heard the mushroom? Recently, a news from the guardian said that a research team from the University of West England in Bristol, UK, conducted electrophysiological experiments on four kinds of mushrooms. The results showed that mushrooms may "speak" through mycelium and preliminarily decode their language system: there are about 50 English words. Did they really hear the sound of mushrooms? The chattering one? That's not true. Before that, let's learn some background knowledge about mushrooms. Mushrooms belong to large fungi in classification. The mushrooms we usually eat are only its fruiting body, which is the aboveground part of mushrooms. In the substrate of mushroom growth, the underground part is also covered with entangled hyphae. Mushroom structure, mycelium twining underground, copy;? Nebraska Statewide Arboretum The function of hyphae is similar to the roots of plants. They are everywhere, can absorb nutrients from the host or soil, and sometimes transport nutrients for other mushrooms. Some kinds of mushrooms also make hyphae form special nets to catch insects. Even if only one part of the bread is moldy, the mycelium may already be everywhere, so don't eat it. Source: YouTube@Science Insider In addition to their basic functions, scientists have found additional properties of hyphae: they can transmit electrical signals, just like electrical pulses on nerve fibers. Animals with nervous system will transmit signals through neurons. On a single neuron, information is transmitted in the form of electrical signals. But this does not mean that electrical signals only belong to the nervous system. In addition to mushrooms, protozoa, Hydra and even plants will spontaneously produce electrical pulse signals. In other words, electrical signals may be a ubiquitous way of communication in the biological world. So the researchers inserted dense electrodes into the hyphae and fruiting bodies of Flammulina velutipes, Cordyceps militaris, omphalotus nidiformis and Schizophyllum commune. Group photo of four mushrooms: Flammulina velutipes (top left), Cordyceps (top right), umbilicus like mushrooms (bottom left), Schizophyllum (bottom right) source: Wikipedia They want to record these rules and try to analyze them. Mushroom insert electrode source: reference "1" Modern mushroom dictionary All four kinds of mushrooms do produce electrical signals, and the waveforms have their own characteristics. But no matter what kind of mushroom, the electrical signals released are in series and regular, full of rhythm. The average interval between each potential spike is 1.5 hours, and the average peak potential is about 0.3 MV. Such discharge behavior is reminiscent of brain neurons. Four Mushroom discharge diagram, different colors represent different electrode channels. Source: reference "1" The researchers then converted the collected electrical signals into binary data. Then, according to linguistic logic and English grammar and language habits, these digital signals are fitted and transformed by algorithm. Although they didn't decipher what the current meant, they had a preliminary understanding of mushroom Language Thesaurus. There are about 50 words in mushroom thesaurus, including 15 ~ 20 high-frequency words. Interestingly, the languages of different mushrooms are not interlinked. The most complex language structure belongs to Schizophyllum, which not only speaks closely, but also likes to use difficult sentences. In contrast, Flammulina velutipes and Cordyceps sinensis are more silent. "We are not mushrooms. I can't understand what you're talking about..." Source: pixabay In addition to communicating with each other through mycelium, the experimental data also recorded the electrical signals between mushrooms and nearby fruits through mycelium. So they speculate that electrical language may be a way for mushroom populations to keep in touch and exchange environmental information. In addition, there are other pulse signals on mushrooms: nutrient transport pulses, so another explanation of these electric pulses is that they are related to the nutritional mode of mushrooms. Of course, there is a third explanation: this mushroom dictionary is actually nothing. Humans think too much, and mushrooms are too lazy to talk. The high-frequency vocabulary of Flammulina velutipes may have three English words: see you XXX picture source pixabay Besides mushrooms, there are screaming tomatoes In the comment area of this paper's website, a professional who claims to have eight years of experience in picking mushrooms said: "I thought mushrooms would communicate with each other for a long time, and they seemed to predict the weather." Although you will regard mushrooms as "vegetarian dishes" on the table, they are closer to animals from the perspective of biological kinship. In this way, there may be many advanced secrets in the mushroom world. However, other studies have found that pure plants also seem to "sound". This time it's a real sound, not an electric current. Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have placed sound receiving devices near tobacco and tomato plants and found that these plants occasionally emit ultrasonic waves with a frequency of 20-150 kHz. If the plant is cut, the frequency of ultrasonic waves increases significantly, and the tomato will scream 25 times an hour on average. If you don't water for 10 consecutive days, thirsty tomato plants will scream 35 times an hour. Miraculously, by analyzing the waveform and frequency of sound waves, researchers found that the sound waves emitted by plants in different states have their own characteristics. It looks like "crying pain" or "crying thirst". Swearing tomato source: pixabay As for why tomatoes scream, the reason is still unknown. The team speculated that it might be the sound of bubbles bursting in the liquid flowing through the plants. It's normal not to know what tomatoes and mushrooms are saying. After all, more than 90% of the 3.8 million fungi in the world are unknown to science. Anyway, you can't even understand what the cat is saying. What mushroom language do you talk about? Cover source: the Royal Society reference material: 1.Adamatzky Andrew2022Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activityR. Soc. open sci. nine trillion and two hundred and eleven billion nine hundred and twenty-six million two hundred and eleven thousand nine hundred and twenty-six https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211926 two https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/06/fungi-electrical-impulses-human-language-study three https://nfs.unl.edu/mushrooms four https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ro8sPOgCBg 5.Plants emit informative airborne sounds under stress I.Khait,O.Lewin-Epstein,R.Sharon,K.Saban,R.Perelman,A.Boonman,Y.Yovel,L.Hadany bioRxiv507590; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/507590 six https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-record-stressed-out-plants-emitting-ultrasonic-squeals-180973716/ (Xinhua News Agency)
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
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