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- Tags: biología cerebro neurociencia pub
[!summary]Cells, even without brains, exhibit basic cognitive abilities, as shown by tiny cell clumps and animals like planaria that can remember tasks even after losing their head. Research by biologist Michael Levin suggests that intelligence is not solely confined to brains but can also be found in cells throughout the body, utilizing bioelectricity for memory and information processing. This discovery of basal cognition challenges traditional views on intelligence and cognition, offering potential applications in fields like artificial intelligence, medicine, and regenerative medicine by harnessing the collective problem-solving abilities of cells. The study of basal cognition presents a new perspective on intelligence, showing that cognition might not be exclusive to brains but a property shared by cells in various living organisms.
Highlights
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It turns out that regular cells—not just highly specialized brain cells such as neurons—have the ability to store information and act on it. Now Levin has shown that the cells do so by using subtle changes in electric fields as a type of memory. These revelations have put the biologist at the vanguard of a new field called basal cognition. Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence—learning, memory, problem-solving—outside brains as well as within them.
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Brains were one of the most recent inventions of Mother Nature, the thing that came last,” says Bongard, who hopes to build deeply intelligent machines from the bottom up. “It’s clear that the body matters, and then somehow you add neural cognition on top. It’s the cherry on the sundae. It’s not the sundae