Ants use a predictive mechanism to compensate for passive displacements by wind

How are stimuli parsed to enable behavior? To transition from sending signals around to coordinating a behavior, Physarum needs to somehow store and process information about stimuli. Stimuli are commonly encountered at the edge of an individual’s network, where flows become vanishingly small. Any molecular signal triggered by a stimulus at the edge will therefore not be homogenized throughout the network. Instead, the organism may use the resulting local concentration gradient to ‘remember’ the location of a stimulus. However, the idea of memory in a slime mold is speculative and how information is processed within the organism remains to be discovered.