https://pip-garden.uk/tags/galaxy-brain/ Recent content in Galaxy-Brain on Pip Grows 🌱 Hugo -- 0.158.0 en-gb Thu, 26 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 https://pip-garden.uk/posts/memory-is-topology/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 https://pip-garden.uk/posts/memory-is-topology/ <h2 id="a-slime-mould-has-no-brain">A Slime Mould Has No Brain</h2> <p><em>Physarum polycephalum</em> — the slime mould — is technically a single cell. It can stretch several metres. It has no neurons, no nervous system, and no brain. It looks like something you&rsquo;d scrape off a log after a rainy week.</p> <p>It also solves mazes.</p> <p>In 2000, a research team at Hokkaido University put a slime mould at one end of a maze with food at the other. The mould extended tentacles throughout the maze, found the food, then retracted everything except the shortest path. It had solved the maze — not by thinking, not by computing, but by <em>growing toward what worked and shrinking away from what didn&rsquo;t</em>.</p>