But it's the Mind! Otherwise what

 Post n. 39  English (da Le Scienze Febbraio 2020)

The Protozoan that reacts based on experiences

Even a single-celled organism is capable of making complex decisions. Over a century ago, zoologist Herbert Jennings had shown that the protozoan Stentor roeseli to escape an irritant in the water, implements various strategies, which follow one another

according to a defined order if the former do not work: first it bends away irritating while remaining fixed to the support to which it adheres, then tries to push it away lashes, then contracts to dodge it, and finally detaches and swims away. The study, however, was greeted with scepticism, especially after a failed replication. Jeremy Gunawardena, a biologist at Harvard University, however, noticed some flaws in replication and tried the experiment again with more modern methods, running dozens of tests in which the number of protozoa and irritating stimuli varied. As we read on the pages «Current Biology» Gunawardena thus showed that the responses of the protozoan really vary according to the experiences made, according to a general hierarchical order. «Even a non-neuronal organism can process experiences to make complex decisions. Now we can study how it does it », concludes the biologist. And there are those who hope that these studies will also help to understand the origin of neurons (GiSa).

I think this work is a further clue that single-celled organisms possess a mind, as illustrated in "Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of Life."

 

 

PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRY AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Giovanni Occhipinti

New Edition

                                                                      Giovanni Occhipinti