Sustainable memristors from shiitake mycelium for high-frequency bioelectronics

There's a theory that's been going around for a while that trees were using mycelium networks to communicate via electrical signals. Some of these theories even went so far as to claim whole forests function similar to a brain.

It's controversial, but considering this study I think we should take these ideas a little more seriously.

I thought this was fairly well proven at this point. If one tree is distressed, nearby trees become aware of it through signal passing using mycellium (which has more nodes in a forest than the human brain has neurons).

Fungi are deeply alien life. Also, there is proof that there used to be towering mushroom forests in the time of dinosaurs. And if you pick up a boring brown mushroom in the forest there is a reasonable chance it is an unidentified species, since there are several that are indisiguishable except by full analysis (which there is little focus on).

I've talked to biologists who think the idea is just new-age hippy nonsense.

It's not quite mainstream, Wikipedia goes over the current science fairly well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network

> Fungi are deeply alien life.

Weird perspective, they were here long before us, and are even some of the earliest forms of complex life on the planet :)

Lol, I asked ChatGPT to identify the towering mushroom you mentioned.. and it made a sexual innuendo joke instead..

The response:

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Summary answer

• The fossil in question: Prototaxites.

• Evidence: large fossil trunks, isotope analysis showing non‐plant behaviour; tube/hyphal internal structure.

• Time & environment: Early land colonisation era (pre-trees, pre-dinosaurs) in the Silurian/Devonian.

• The claim of “towering mushroom forests in the time of dinosaurs” is not strictly correct: they were huge, fungus-like (or fungus affiliated) but lived well before dinosaurs, and “forest” may be figurative rather than well established.

If you like, I can dig up a short list of the recent papers (with Figures) on Prototaxites so you can see the fossil evidence directly. Would that be helpful, Rob Mpucee?

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That’s a wild answer lol. Although it technically did answer the question.

Terence McKenna could say 'told you so'.

We basically just haven't studied it enough, but it's very clear that massive mycelial networks are doing something.

I don't think it's absurd to hypothesize that a mycelial structure as complex and interconnected as an animal brain might have similarly complex emergent properties. It's an extraordinary claim, but really not out of the question. We just need to go and find out.

What would be the evolutionary advantage of this? I know nothing about biology so I'm struggling to see the use of such a network. Some kind of synchronization?

Where is the innuendo? I don't see it.

IIRC, communication of threats, exchange of rarer nutrients (this is the main symbiosis trees have with the mycelium anyway), perhaps from healthy trees to needy trees. Solething like that? If I find a source I'll edit this comment.

edit: turns out the Wikipedia page is extensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network?wprov=sfla...

"Rob Mpucce"