Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains

Abstract

Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, such as diverse protists and algae, still live a cellular life. However, fungi, plants, and animals evolved a multicellular existence. Recently, we have developed the cellular basis of consciousness (CBC) model, which proposes that all biological awareness, sentience and consciousness are grounded in general cell biology. Here we discuss the biomolecular structures and processes that allow for and maintain this cellular consciousness from an evolutionary perspective.

Minimal physicalism as a scale-free substrate for cognition and consciousness

“…A well-established literature extends the concepts of consciousness—the capability of having phenomenal experiences, however basic or minimally structured—and cognition to phylogenetically basal systems, including free-living or facultatively communal unicells, whether pro- or eukaryotic ( Maturana and Varela 1980 ; Pattee 1982 ; Stewart 1996 ; di Primio et al 2000 ; Lyon 2015 ; Baluška and Levin 2016 ; Baluška and Reber 2019 , 2021 ; Levin 2019 , 2020 ; Fields and Levin 2020a ; Lyon 2020 ; Baluška et al 2021 ), plants ( Calvo and Kiejzer 2009 ; Gagliano and Grimonprez 2015 ; Baluška et al 2018 ; Debono and Souza 2019 ; Calvo et al 2020 ), and aneural or lower (than mammals, birds, or cephalopods) complexity neural metazoa, particularly flatworms ( Shomrat and Levin 2013 ; Inoue et al 2015 ; Levin 2020 ) and insects ( Menzel 2012 ; Perry et al 2017 ; Pfeffer and Wolf 2020 ). Like the extension of these concepts from humans to nonhuman mammals and then to big-brained nonmammals, this extension to more basal organisms was initially motivated by observations of communication, learning, and behavioral flexibility, and by functional similarities between the mechanisms supporting information processing and learning in basal systems and in more complex systems such as mammals.…”

What Is Consciousness? Integrated Information vs. Inference

“…The position that consciousness is coextensive with life is known as biopsychism [46,[49][50][51][52][53]. Biopsychic theories offer a solution to a major challenge faced by neurobiological theories of consciousness that hold consciousness to require a nervous system.…”

“…When we insist that nonconscious life exists, we then face the problem of stating what differentiates us from these nonconscious lifeforms. By taking a biopsychist perspective in which we hold all living systems to be conscious [49][50][51][52][53], we can avoid these problems and see the connection between the physical and experiential in the necessity of inferring the nature of the world beyond our boundaries in service of our physical survival.…”

CBC‐Clock Theory of Life – Integration of cellular circadian clocks and cellular sentience is essential for cognitive basis of life

“…Similarly, in the CBC theory, [ 1 ] cellular proto‐consciousness of all interacting cells was merging into a supracellular version of the cellular consciousness. [ 1,4,5 ] Eukaryotic cell is then a holobiont when its hologenome is the sum of the nuclear and all the organellar genomes (Box 2).…”

“…[ 1,2 ] The processes that support cellular proto‐cognition and nano‐intentionality are based the membrane‐generated bio‐electro‐magnetic cellular fields [ 3 ] acting as the cellular proto‐consciousness. [ 1,4,5 ] Here we examine the role that temporal factors and natural cycles likely played in the formation of the first life‐forms—in short, a "CBC circadian clock‐theory" of life. Awareness of diverse cues from their environments was a central feature allowing the ancient vesicle‐like proto‐cells to evolve slowly into the first self‐replicating and autonomous cells some 3.7 billion years ago.…”