Slime Mould Memristors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that slime mould protoplasmic tubes exhibit memristive behavior, contributing to bio-electronic circuit development by showing current-voltage profiles consistent with memristors due to living protoplasm.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that living slime moulds display memristive properties, expanding understanding of bio-electronic systems and active memristor modeling.

Findings

Protoplasmic tubes show memristive current-voltage profiles.

The memristive effect is due to the living protoplasm.

Asymmetric V-I curves are modeled by active memristors.

Abstract

In laboratory experiments we demonstrate that protoplasmic tubes of acellular slime mould \emph{Physarum polycephalum} show current versus voltage profiles consistent with memristive systems and that the effect is due to the living protoplasm of the mould. This complements previous findings on memristive properties of other living systems (human skin and blood) and contributes to development of self-growing bio-electronic circuits. Distinctive asymmetric $V$-$I$ curves which were occasionally observed when the internal current is on the same order as the driven current, are well-modelled by the concept of active memristors.