Nautilus

This Crystal Mimics Learning and Forgetting

You don’t need a brain to learn. Slime molds, for example, solve mazes and navigate obstacles—all without a single neuron. Information about their environment is somehow stored across their bodies. (Scientists are still a bit hazy on how this works.)

Plasmodium stage of a slime mold.Photograph by By Dr Morley Read / Flickr

But what about something that isn’t even alive? A new suggests that samarium nickelate oxide (SNO, for short), a

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