2022/04/01 by Andrew Adamatzky · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies #Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research #Fractal and DNA sequence analysis
paper · doi:10.1098/rsos.211926
openalex publication_date 2022/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/03
Fungi exhibit oscillations of extracellular electrical potential recorded via differential electrodes inserted into a substrate colonized by mycelium or directly into sporocarps. We analysed electrical activity of ghost fungi ( Omphalotus nidiformis ), Enoki fungi ( Flammulina velutipes ), split gill fungi ( Schizophyllum commune ) and caterpillar fungi ( Cordyceps militaris ). The spiking characteristics are species specific: a spike duration varies from 1 to 21 h and an amplitude from 0.03 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 fungal 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 the most complex sentences.