Competition between ferro-retrieval and anti-ferro orders in a Hopfield-like network model for plant intelligence

TL;DR

This paper models plant cells as a network with inhibitory interactions, revealing that anti-ferromagnetic order significantly weakens the plant's memory capacity, providing insights into plant intelligence mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a Hopfield-like network model incorporating inhibitory interactions to analyze plant memory capacity, highlighting the impact of anti-ferromagnetic order.

Findings

Anti-ferromagnetic order reduces memory capacity

Plant memory ability is weaker than previously thought

Inhibitory connections significantly influence network performance

Abstract

We introduce a simple cellular-network model to explain the capacity of the plants as memory devices. Following earlier observations (Bose \cite{Bose} and others), we regard the plant as a network in which each of the elements (plant cells) are connected via negative (inhibitory) interactions. To investigate the performance of the network, we construct a model following that of Hopfield, whose energy function possesses both Hebbian spin glass and anti-ferromagnetic terms. With the assistance of the replica method, we find that the memory state of the network decreases enormously due to the effect of the anti-ferromagnetic order induced by the inhibitory connections. We conclude that the ability of the plant as a memory device is rather weak.