" I am struck by the way memories can be formed. This is more like ROM where there is a permanent scar, but the ROM-memory has multiple states and is read to calculate the probability of turning right."
Tiny organisms remember the way to food - 17 March 2007 - New Scientist
mmediately after an amoeba turned right, it was twice as likely to turn left as right again, and vice versa, they told a meeting of the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, Colorado, last week. This suggests that the cells have a rudimentary memory, being able to remember the last direction they had just turned in, says Robert Austin, a biophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the study.
Such memories might be laid down because of the way the cell moves. To turn, an amoeba extends part of its body in the preferred direction, which creates a scar made of protein down that side of the cell. The scar might make the cell temporarily more likely to move in the opposite direction. For the amoeba, the pay-off is that it avoids travelling in circles and hence can search a larger area.
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