The language of fungi

After having written an article related to the pre-neutral system (pre-cns) I learned of a fascinating discovery of Andrew Adamatsky (see this), who has studied sponges and found that they show electrical activity sequences of analogs of action potentials (‘spikes’).

The abstract of the article gives an overview about the findings.

Fungi exhibit oscillations of extracellular electrical potential recorded via differential electrodes inserted into a substrate colonised by mycelium or directly into sporocarps. We analysed electrical activity of ghost fungi (Omphalotus ni- diformis), Enoki fungi (Flammulina velutipes), split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune) and caterpillar fungi (Cordyceps militari). The spiking characteristics are species specific: a spike duration varies from one to 21 hours and an amplitude from 0.03 mV to 2.1 mV.

We found that spikes are often clustered into trains. Assuming that spikes of electrical activity are used by fungi to communicate and process information in mycelium networks, we group spikes into words and provide a linguistic and information complexity analysis of the fun- gal spiking activity. We demonstrate that distributions of fungal word lengths match that of human languages. We also construct algorithmic and Liz-Zempel complexity hierarchies of fungal sentences and show that species S. commune generate most complex sentences.

The amplitude of spikes varies in the range .03- 2.1 meV. This range is consistent with the interpretation as analogs of miniature potentials corresponding to the reduction of the gravitational energy and having maximal value .4 meV. The natural question is whether this kind of communication is specific to fungi or occurs also in preunoral and neuronal systems in general.

The language hypothesis conforms with the TGD based view that the dark variants of genetic code realized using as codons dark photon triplets analogous to 3-chords defining what I call bioharmony serving as a correlate for emotional state and fundamental level (see this and this). Dark 3N-photons as representation of for instance genes, define analogs of music pieces. For the TGD based view of the emergence of human language see (see this). Genetic code would have number theoretic and geometric origin and would be universal. It would have several realizations and be realized also in other than biological systems.

Dark 3N-photons are analogous to Bose-Einstein condensate of 3N-photons and correspond to so-called Galois singlets, whose formation would rely on a universal number theoretical mechanism for the formation of bound states.

The sequence of dark codons selects the receiver, which must possess the same sequence of dark nucleon triplets to achieve resonance. If the frequency scale is modulated, the reception generates a sequence of 3N-pulses analogous to nerve pulse sequence and in this way transforms information coded to frequency modulation to a pulse sequence.

See the article How animals without brain can behave as if they had brain? or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.