Cephalopods and Neuroscience Go Arm in Arm in The Biological Bulletin.

Abstract

Cephalopods and scientists have for decades been partners in the pages ofThe Biological Bulletin, owing to the fascinating biology of these charismaticmegafauna, their accessibility at Woods Hole’s Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and the focus of The Biological Bulletin on the comparative biology of marine animals. In particular, longfin inshore squid, Doryteuthis pealeii, sometimes called the “Woods Hole squid” (Fig. 1) because they migrate each spring to the waters of Cape Cod, have lured neuroscientists to Woods Hole to study the neurons that control the distinctive jetescape behavior of these animals. In the summer of 1936, the 29-year-old English comparative zoologist John Zachary (JZ) Young (Fig. 2) came to Woods Hole to study the stellate ganglion of squid—in particular that ganglion’s characteristic motor neuron, with its giant axon. This neuron integrates various inputs and, when sufficiently excited, produces an action potential that rapidly travels via its giant axon to the mantle muscles of the squid’s body. There, excitation of circularmuscle fibers causes a contraction of themantle, and the ensuing rapid jet-escape behavior. That summer, Young had three main lines of investigation of these neurons. One was a collaboration with a longtime MBL summer researcher, C. Ladd Prosser, also 29 years old that summer (Fig. 2), in which they studied the physiology of the synapses between these motor giant axons and the circular muscle. Prosser and Young published their work from the summer of 1936 in the next year’s October issue of The Biological Bulletin (“Responses of Muscles of the Squid to Repetitive Stimulation of the Giant Nerve Fibers,” 73: 237–241; Fig. 3). They examined whether the responses of these muscle fibers were facilitating, that is, whether the responses became larger with each of a series of axon potentials. Prosser and Young’s interest was driven by their commitment to comparative physiology. They knew that the