Why do octopuses camouflage when asleep?

Practice is a crucial component of mastering many movements. However, studies have shown that the rest periods in between practice sessions are equally important. During rest periods, and especially while asleep, human and animal brains undergo a process of 'offline practice' resulting in subsequent gains in behavioral performance. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how offline practice produces later improvements. To that end, we study octopus camouflage behavior. Octopuses' survival is dependent on quickly wielding their skin color and texture to display strikingly complex visual patterns. Here, we leverage our state-of-the-art high-resolution filming setup to report a near complete readout of the neural population responsible for generating the collective behavior of skin camouflage patterns. We utilize an entropy-based theoretical framework to quantitatively examine the collective nature of skin cell interactions over time. Beyond studying the potentially evolving relationship between patterns adopted during sleep and wake, we are working to show how manipulating the surroundings of the animal while awake affects the content of its practice during sleep. Together, these findings may help elucidate the complex nature of camouflage and the general phenomenon of 'offline practice'.