Psience Quest

Can a single-celled organism 'change its mind'? New study says yes

Bot Summary?

Quote:In an effort to replicate an experiment conducted over a century ago, systems biologists at Harvard Medical School now present compelling evidence confirming at least one single-cell organism—the strikingly trumpet-shaped Stentor roeselii—exhibits a hierarchy of avoidance behaviors.

Exposed repeatedly to the same stimulation—in this case a pulse of irritating particles—the organism can in effect "change its mind" about how to respond, the authors said, indicating a capacity for relatively complex decision-making processes.
The results are published online in Current Biology on Dec. 5.

"Our findings show that single cells can be much more sophisticated than we generally give them credit for," said corresponding study author Jeremy Gunawardena, associate professor of systems biology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

I read this recently:

(The first minds)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/...s&lang=en&

There seems to be a fair amount of evidence for decision making in single celled organisms.
The author's position is that he has no idea how consciousness arises but that finding evidence of it in such simple organisms at least reduces the material search space.

Welcome to the forum!

That looks like a fascinating book.

(2020-01-04, 10:23 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Welcome to the forum!

That looks like a fascinating book.

Interesting that it was written by one of the authors of the recent sceptical response to Etzel Cardeña's paper on the evidence for psi in American Psychologist.

(2020-01-04, 10:40 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting that it was written by one of the authors of the recent sceptical response to Etzel Cardeña's paper on the evidence for psi in American Psychologist.

Oh, good catch. Interesting indeed. One might be forgiven for thinking that sentience in single-celled organisms is as anomalous from a conventional point of view as is psi.

Cross-referencing to the new thread Can a Cell Make Decisions?