BRISTOL, England: A peer-reviewed study recorded moss electrical signals spreading across a living mat, suggesting coordinated electrical activity without showing evidence of neurons, consciousness or thought.
Andy Adamatzky, professor of unconventional computing at the University of the West of England, Bristol, published the study in Royal Society Open Science on July 22.
Adamatzky collected Brachythecium rutabulum from North Somerset and placed eight electrode pairs between one and two centimetres apart. He then recorded electrical activity for 178 hours.
The experiment generated more than five million measurements. Researchers identified fast, intermediate and slow electrical patterns, including spikes, rhythmic fluctuations and slow depolarisation waves.
Signals appeared at different electrodes in an ordered sequence. The paper said this pattern suggested that electrical activity propagated across the moss cushion rather than remaining confined to one location.
Adamatzky described the moss as a potentially “spatially distributed excitable system” capable of coordinating electrical activity across space and time. However, the experiment did not demonstrate intelligence, language or consciousness, and moss does not have neurons.
The study also lacked an inactive control substrate. That means researchers could not fully rule out factors such as environmental changes, equipment drift, contamination or moisture variation.
Read:Storm Wall Solar Storm Shield Proposed by Researchers
Adamatzky said further controlled experiments involving light, temperature and touch would be needed to test whether moss could eventually support biohybrid environmental sensors.
