Learning without a conventional brain

The project wants to test if advanced learning takes places in a cnidarian jellyfish – an animal without a conventional brain. Cnidaria (jellyfish, sea anemones, corals and their kin) is one of the most basal animal phyla and together with the ctenophores (comb jellies) they are the first to evolve a nervous system. Learning is a hallmark of animals allowing them to display a behavioural plasticity, which is critical for survival, and our hypothesis is that advanced learning is not requiring a centralized brain as normally believed but is instead a fundamental property of nervous systems. If true and jellyfish display advanced learning this will challenge our basic understanding of learning along with highlighting new and in many ways favorable experimental animals for examining the neurobiological details behind memory formation and learning.