Biological Prescience: The Role of Anticipation in Organismal Processes

Abstract

Anticipation is the act of using information about the past and present to make predictions about future scenarios. As a concept, it is predominantly associated with the psychology of the human mind; however, there is accumulating evidence that diverse taxa without complex neural systems, and even biochemical networks themselves, can respond to perceived future conditions. Although anticipatory processes, such as circadian rhythms, stress priming, and cephalic responses, have been extensively studied over the last three centuries, newer research on anticipatory genetic networks in microbial species shows that anticipatory processes are widespread, evolutionarily old, and not simply reserved for neurological complex organisms. Overall, data suggest that anticipatory responses represent a unique type of biological processes that can be distinguished based on their organizational properties and mechanisms. Unfortunately, an empirically based biologically explicit framework for describing anticipatory processes does not currently exist. This review attempts to fill this void by discussing the existing examples of anticipatory processes in non-cognitive organisms, providing potential criteria for defining anticipatory processes, as well as their putative mechanisms, and drawing attention to the often-overlooked role of anticipation in the evolution of physiological systems. Ultimately, a case is made for incorporating an anticipatory framework into the existing physiological paradigm to advance our understanding of complex biological processes.

Embodied Cognitive Morphogenesis as a Route to Intelligent Systems

“…As embodied cognitive morphogenesis is about bridging developmental biology with emergent cognition, we are in a unique position to stake out a novel stance on 4E cognition. Both in the morphogenetic process itself and in the emergence of cognition, anticipatory mechanisms [97] and complex self-assembly mechanisms [98] become important. From the developing organism's perspective, the resulting tensegrity leads not only to structural stability, but stability during subsequent transformations.…”

Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems

“…As embodied cognitive morphogenesis is about bridging developmental biology with emergent cognition, we are in a unique position to stake out a novel stance on 4E cognition. Both in the morphogenetic process itself and in the emergence of cognition, anticipatory mechanisms [83] and complex self-assembly mechanisms [84] become important. From a developmental perspective, tensegrity leads not only to structural permanence, but stability during subsequent transformations.…”

Many Paths to Anticipatory Behavior: Anticipatory Model Acquisition Across Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Timescales

“…Anticipatory behavior (henceforth AB) refers to the ability of an organism to coordinate its behavior with one or more future environmental or organismal states, proactively influencing how or whether such states occur. Such behavior has been of great interest to cognitive science and psychology because it has often been seen as indicative of cognition (Bartlett 1932;Craik 1943;Piaget 1970;Neisser 1976;Drescher 1991;Arbib 1992;Castelfranchi 2005;Lyon 2006 ;Pezzulo 2008 ;Bickhard 2009;Deacon 2012;Clark 2016;Corcoran et al 2020;Sims 2021). Interestingly, within the last 30 years various biological studies have suggested that AB is not limited to neuronal organisms but may also be exhibited by organisms such as bacteria (Schild et al 2007;Tagkopoulos et al 2008), fungi (Mitchell et al 2009;Rodaki et al 2009), acellular slime mold (Saigusa et al 2008), amoebae (De la Fuente et al 2019), and plants (Novoplansky et al 1990;Latzel and Münzbergová 2018).…”