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Melina Hale of University of Chicago is a co-principal investigator on a grant to MBL Senior Scientist Roger Hanlon (quoted below) to illuminate the sensorimotor control of octopus arms.

Octopuses' sucker-covered arms can act as if they contain partly independent mini brains. Each arm gathers sensory information to drive its own movements—and even those of other arms—without consulting major brain regions.

“Their arms are so mobile; they're soft, and they can bend and twist and do all sorts of things,” says Melina Hale, a biologist at the University of Chicago. In a study in Current Biology, she and her colleagues reveal the strange connections that may facilitate these supple limbs' decentralized coordination.

The researchers investigated the anatomy of young Octopus bimaculoides, which are the size of “a big Tic Tac,” says study lead author Adam Kuuspalu, also at Chicago.