All living cells are cognitive

Shapiro, James A.

doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2020.08.120

Cited by 42 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 240 publications

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“…In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin [19] provided a scientific basis for developing a cognitive theory based on close observation of and experiment with different forms of life [20,21]. 4 Darwin proposed that the abundant diversity of organisms on Earth, along with their 'mental' faculties, evolved from much simpler forms, ultimately from single cells. Of the 'far more important researches' that Darwin saw arising in the future from this view of nature was 'Psy-chology…based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation' [19, pp.…”

Section: Reviving a Dormant Darwinian Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Or so we aim to demonstrate. Evidence that cognitive concepts such as 'sensing', 'memory', 'learning', 'communication' and 'decision making' can be applied non-metaphorically to the behaviour of bacteria (for example) is extensive and growing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. This suggests, first, that similar behaviour should be found in unicellular eukaryotes and, second, the molecular infrastructure for capacities typically associated with brains long predated the evolution of neurons, much less central nervous systems, which appears to be the case, as several contributions in this extended theme issue attest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics

Lyon

Keijzer

Arendt

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

130

119

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The premise of this two-part theme issue is simple: the cognitive sciences should join the rest of the life sciences in how they approach the quarry within their research domain. Specifically, understanding how organisms on the lower branches of the phylogenetic tree become familiar with, value and exploit elements of an ecological niche while avoiding harm can be expected to aid understanding of how organisms that evolved later (including Homo sapiens ) do the same or similar things. We call this approach basal cognition. In this introductory essay, we explain what the approach involves. Because no definition of cognition exists that reflects its biological basis, we advance a working definition that can be operationalized; introduce a behaviour-generating toolkit of capacities that comprise the function (e.g. sensing/perception, memory, valence, learning, decision making, communication), each element of which can be studied relatively independently; and identify a (necessarily incomplete) suite of common biophysical mechanisms found throughout the domains of life involved in implementing the toolkit. The articles in this collection illuminate different aspects of basal cognition across different forms of biological organization, from prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes—the focus of Part 1—to plants and finally to animals, without and with nervous systems, the focus of Part 2. By showcasing work in diverse, currently disconnected fields, we hope to sketch the outline of a new multidisciplinary approach for comprehending cognition, arguably the most fascinating and hard-to-fathom evolved function on this planet. Doing so has the potential to shed light on problems in a wide variety of research domains, including microbiology, immunology, zoology, biophysics, botany, developmental biology, neurobiology/science, regenerative medicine, computational biology, artificial life and synthetic bioengineering. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: conceptual tools and the view from the single cell’.

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Section: Reviving a Dormant Darwinian Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics

Lyon

Keijzer

Arendt

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

130

119

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“…Cognition has been traditionally defined as “the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment” [ 32 ], and is normally associated with neural organisms. More recently, however, cognition has been understood to manifest in aneural life forms [ 33 , 34 ]. In fact, it has recently been claimed that simplest life—bacteria—exhibits strikingly sophisticated cognitive capabilities, despite their aneural nature [ 33 , 34 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, however, cognition has been understood to manifest in aneural life forms [ 33 , 34 ]. In fact, it has recently been claimed that simplest life—bacteria—exhibits strikingly sophisticated cognitive capabilities, despite their aneural nature [ 33 , 34 ]. That realization leads to the obvious question: could a chemical system be able to exhibit rudimentary cognitive behavior, to perceive, process, and react to information?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Was Nature Able to Discover Its Own Laws—Twice?

Pross

2021

Life

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The central thesis of the modern scientific revolution is that nature is objective. Yet, somehow, out of that objective reality, projective systems emerged—cognitive and purposeful. More remarkably, through nature’s objective laws, chemical systems emerged and evolved to take advantage of those laws. Even more inexplicably, nature uncovered those laws twice—once unconsciously, once consciously. Accordingly, one could rephrase the origin of life question as follows: how was nature able to become self-aware and discover its own laws? What is the law of nature that enabled nature to discover its own laws? Addressing these challenging questions in physical-chemical terms may be possible through the newly emergent field of systems chemistry.

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“…The central dogma of molecular biology is missing this biological reality as the three-dimensional conformations of proteins are not dictated solely by the information encoded in DNA sequences [ 141 , 142 ], but rather through the bioelectric properties of proteins and their subcellular physicochemical senomic environment, including special properties of water interacting with diverse cellular surfaces. Moreover, any biological structure acts as information relevant for biocommunication, which implies that the basic life processes have fundamentally cognitive features [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 140 , 167 , 168 , 169 , 170 , 171 , 172 , 173 , 174 , 175 , 176 ]. In a poetic language, proteins are dancing to senomic tunes within the cellular senomic environment.…”

Section: Membranes and Proteins As Bioelectric Devices—proteins mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains

Baluška

Miller

Reber

2021

IJMS

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Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, such as diverse protists and algae, still live a cellular life. However, fungi, plants, and animals evolved a multicellular existence. Recently, we have developed the cellular basis of consciousness (CBC) model, which proposes that all biological awareness, sentience and consciousness are grounded in general cell biology. Here we discuss the biomolecular structures and processes that allow for and maintain this cellular consciousness from an evolutionary perspective.

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All living cells are cognitive

Cited by 42 publications

References 240 publications

Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics

Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics

How Was Nature Able to Discover Its Own Laws—Twice?

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains

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