Comment on The entire body of a sea urchin is what researchers are now calling an “all-body brain,” with neurons that function as a brain throughout its anatomy.

jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Depends on your definition of thinking. If by think you mean react to their environment and possibly have some form of chemical based memory, that seems possible. Hell they have to react to the environment to maintain homeostasis. Multicellular organisms are ultimately a kind of colony of unicellular organisms if you get right down to it.

  If you mean actual cognition, definitely not. There’s an indisputable difference between reacting to stimulus and considering the cause of the stimulus and the second one needs a neutral network or something like it, it’s simply too complex… Probably.

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  • jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The evidence of the mechanism of anesthetics on microtubules preventing consciousness makes me suspect that actual honest to god consciousness is phenomenon that arises from fundamentally intra-cellular, not inter-cellular mechanisms; that no more than a single cell is required to have a form of experience. Which is a potential I hate, but it’s the most consistent model I have.

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    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Microtubules are also just mechanically involved in synaptic firing. If you disrupt their chemistry you disrupt the ion transfer chains throughout the entire synapse. I’m not nearly read enough on the finer details on those mechanisms and definitely not the quantum theory you seem to be referencing to offer an expert opinion but I’m really inclined to go with Occam’s Razor on this one.

      Who knows though, maybe you’re right, it certainly would explain some weird behaviors most microbiologists just kind of shrug off 🤷‍♂️

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