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I think much of our understanding of brains is biased by beginning with studying neurons before fully understanding how single cells are able to make complex de
by throwaway316943 5y ago
I think much of our understanding of brains is biased by beginning with studying neurons before fully understanding how single cells are able to make complex decisions. Single celled organisms can do incredible things and understanding how they do that using molecular machinery is probably the key to understanding how large networks of them can produce macro scale behaviour by communicating with each other.
- bckr 5y agoGreat point. There is ongoing research into whether memory is necessarily a network effect or if single neurons can hold memories. It's looking like they can. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51331-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51331-5
- foobiekr 5y agoThere are some very sophisticated behaviors displayed by single/low-cell-count micro-organisms. It is something I find very challenging to put into the accepted framework of how cognition works. I think there are some are order-of-magnitude issues that we are missing, probably due to the technology we have available.