Communicative and Integrative Biology最新文献

Nervous and neurodegenerative diseases are considered one of the most common groups among humanity, and the number of these diseases in the population is constantly increasing. At the same time, the prevalence of gastrointestinal and digestive system pathologies is also steadily growing. The literature contains numerous data on the relationship between the nervous system and the digestive system through a bidirectional microbiota-gut-brain axis, as well as connections via the circulatory and immune systems, among others. This work attempts to compile existing literature on this topic, summarize it, identify common patterns, and assess how strongly the gut can influence the course of various CNS disorders. It also aims to identify specific strains that may impact certain disorders and pathologies. Additionally, an effort was made to understand the mechanisms by which the microbiota affects the brain.

Behavioral ecology of fungi is an emerging field investigating how fungi respond to environmental stimuli through morphological and physiological changes. Progress requires methodologies suited to fungal biology. Here, we developed an experimental approach to test for memory in the ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor. We hypothesized that mycelium exposed to pea cotyledons would retain directional information about the nutrient source. To test this, a portion of the mycelium was transferred to fresh medium, where memory would be assessed by asymmetrical growth toward the former nutrient position. The hypothesis was not supported, but the methods offer a framework for exploring fungal behavior in both ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic species. Although no evidence of memory was found, this study highlights the value of publishing both positive and negative results and provides tools to advance research on fungal cognition and behavior.

Microtubules are nanoscale spintronic oscillators with memristive properties. Spintronic and memristive effects, together with some unique conditions found in the axon initial segment (AIS), allow quantum coherence to emerge spontaneously in a population of microtubules located within the AIS. According to the QBIT theory, the spontaneous emergence of coherence in a population of microtubules is the necessary and sufficient condition for the generation of a micro-consciousness (a quale) by the brain. Simultaneous generation of multiple qualia by synchronized activity in different parts of the cerebral cortex gives rise to the appearance of a macro-consciousness: a seemingly unified subjective experience.

Plant cognition has progressed from anecdote to rigor, yet the field still lacks a quantitative test for when distributed plant activity crosses into unified - perhaps conscious - processing. I introduce Pattern-Temporal Synergy (PTS), a substrate-agnostic metric rooted in Dynergeia, a relation-first ontology in which consciousness is reflexive coherence among five universal patterns - self-reference, division-creation, information integration, responsiveness, and flux - phase-locked inside a system's binding window (τ). Each pattern is operationalized with established signal-processing measures; their median strength is multiplied by their mean synergy and released only if a τ-specific coherence gate is met. Three preregistered hypotheses anchor the study: H1 baseline PTS > 0 in intact plants; H2 4% diethyl-ether collapses PTS below threshold ϕ; H3 PTS rebounds on wash-out. A multispecies protocol - Mimosa pudica, Arabidopsis thaliana, Picea abies - combines 64-channel surface electrodes, glutamate-sensitive Ca2+ imaging and micro-optode O2/heat-flux probes. Sliding 3 ×τ windows with phase-shuffled surrogates yield z-scored PTS trajectories, adjudicated by preregistered effect-size criteria. By turning decades of qualitative insight into falsifiable numbers, PTS offers plant biology a litmus test for conscious-level processing, directly challenges Integrated Information Theory and supplies a road-map for cross-kingdom comparisons - including neuromorphic silicon. Confirmatory results would shift debates on plant sentience from speculation to data; null results would equally refine what consciousness requires.

Understanding how populations of cells collectively coordinate activity to produce the complex structures and behaviors that characterize multicellular organisms, and which coordinated activities, if any, survive processes that reshape cells and tissues into organoids, are fundamental issues in modern biology. Here, we show how techniques from complex systems and multivariate information theory provide a framework for inferring the structure of collective organization in non-neural tissue. Many of these techniques were developed in the context of theoretical neuroscience, where these statistics have been found to be altered during different cognitive, clinical, or behavioral states, and are generally thought to be informative about the underlying dynamics linking biology to cognition. Here, we show that these same patterns of coordinated activity are also present in the aneural tissues of evolutionarily distant biological systems: preparations of embryonic Xenopus laevis tissue (known as "basal Xenobots"). These similarities suggest that such patterns of activity either arose independently in these two systems (epithelial constructs and brains); are epiphenomenological byproducts of other dynamics conserved across vastly different configurations of life; or somehow directly support adaptive behavior across diverse living systems. Finally, these results provide unambiguous support for the hypothesis that, despite their apparent simplicity as collections of non-neural epithelial cells, Xenobots are in fact integrated, complex systems in their own right, with sophisticated internal information structures.

According to Information Vortex Theory, the spatially distributed wave energy associated with the constituent molecules of an incepting cell interacts with the surrounding space to generate a rotating bioinformation field, forming a vortex. This vortex, characterized as a local maximum of energy density, constitutes both inbound and outbound energy fluxes, corresponding to signal reception and dispersal, respectively. The vortex represents a foundational step in the emergence of life, facilitating both the storage of information and, through successive wave superpositions, the basic processing of information. This mechanism is posited to underpin the self-organizing principles that are essential to life's origin. This study delineates the sequence of events within the information vortex that are causative to the emergence of plant life, emphasizing the role of a central information processing means, which determines evolutionary steps. An environmental context that resists cytoplasmic motion leads to signals favoring pinocytosis, which progressively intensify within the emerging information vortex while concurrently diminishing the expression of phagocytic wave forms. Furthermore, asexual reproductive events, represented by self-division waveforms, propagate this encoded information across successive generations. To elucidate these mechanisms, system-level modeling incorporating feedback loops and adaptive interventions is developed, illustrating the iterative nature of learning and pattern reinforcement. In parallel, a wave-theory-based mathematical framework is introduced to characterize the information vortex energy fluxes and the encoding of the arriving signals epigenetically in the genome.

Seed germination is a strictly regulated, multistage, and complex process in which a seed matures into a plant through a series of processes. Dormancy is defined as the inability of a viable seed to reach maturity. A seed can enter dormancy at any point in its development if it is still in the mother plant (primary dormancy) or if it is released because of environmental conditions (secondary dormancy). Germination is determined by a myriad of factors, such as agronomic (type of mother plant and growing conditions), chemical (nutrients), environmental (biotic and abiotic, including extreme conditions), molecular (genes), and physiological (hormones) factors. The authors propose the involvement of 'X-factors,' which are currently unknown, in shaping seed fate. Despite many efforts in plant neurobiology, studies on consciousness remain elusive. This article aims to put forth constructive suggestions and instigate future work on seed (or plant) cognition and consciousness, emphasizing the involvement of X-factors rather than arguing about the topic. The authors propose the involvement of 'X-factors, ' which are currently unknown, in shaping seed fate. This review article addresses the factors that influence germination and highlights the consciousness and X-factors of seeds and plants.

Creativity, which is the leverage of imagination to attain valued goals, is one of the defining features of humans. It is the trait that gives an advantage to humans in solving problems, enhancing their survival. Creativity is a critical evolved trait, hard-wired in the human genome and linked with many benefits, including mating success, psychological well-being, and human thriving. Evidence suggests creativity is a critical source of meaning. Many features of the modern world promote the interrelated factors of low trust, fear, and acute stress which make people vulnerable to meaninglessness or meaning crisis and these same factors negatively impact creativity. This suggests a relationship between meaning in life and creativity in which meaninglessness may negatively impact creativity and vice versa. In this paper, the role of creativity in providing meaning in human life, as the essence of human existence to repay our evolutionary or existential debt, and the intricate relationship between psychological well being, creativity and meaning in life are discussed. The need and ways to prioritize creativity in society to improve psychological well-being and make people live meaningfully are also discussed.

We argue here that the Origin of Life (OOL) problem is not just a chemistry problem but is also, and primarily, a cognitive science problem. When interpreted through the lens of the Conway-Kochen theorem and the Free Energy Principle, contemporary physics characterizes all complex dynamical systems that persist through time as Bayesian agents. If all persistent systems are to some - perhaps only minimal - extent cognitive, are all persistent systems to some extent alive, or are living systems only a subset of cognitive systems? We argue that no bright line can be drawn, and we re-assess, from this perspective, the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. We conclude that improving our abilities to recognize and communicate with diverse intelligences in diverse embodiments, whether based on familiar biochemistry or not, will either resolve or obviate the OOL problem.

The individualistic and collectivistic intelligent behaviors observed in mammals, birds, and fishes have been appreciated by many scientists in recent years and supported by the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in 2012. Behavioral studies in lower organisms like arthropods and cephalopods showed the presence of multisensory integration, decision-making, and goal-directed behavior in these non-vertebrate animals. The presence of intelligent and history-dependent behaviors has been studied in microorganisms, and recent studies propose the possibility of cognition in single cellular organisms. The Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), proposed by Arthur Reber in 2016 and elaborated by Baluška and Reber in 2019, suggests the possibility of consciousness in single cellular organisms. However, the critics of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness theory state that the individual bacterial cell does not make choices, and the decision-making is the result of stochastic differences in protein levels. Here, we want to address the criticism of decision-making in bacteria. An attempt is made to give a new perspective to the existing model to explain the flexibility in bacterial behavior in an ever-changing environment. The authors would like to consider an alternative perspective on flexibility in decision-making as the result of multiple pathways that have convergence and divergence as observed in the brain. Flexibility provides the possibility to have individualistic behavior, and the existence of such pathways can be considered as the molecular mechanism underlying individualistic decision-making in bacteria as well as in humans.