The mind of plants: Thinking the unthinkable

Abstract

Across all species, individuals thrive in complex ecological systems, which they rarely have complete knowledge of. To cope with this uncertainty and still make good choices while avoiding costly errors, organisms have developed the ability to exploit key features associated with their environment. That through experience, humans and other animals are quick at learning to associate specific cues with particular places, events and circumstances has long been known; the idea that plants are also capable of learning by association had never been proven until now. Here I comment on the recent paper that experimentally demonstrated associative learning in plants, thus qualifying them as proper subjects of cognitive research. Additionally, I make the point that the current fundamental premise in cognitive science—that we must understanding the precise neural underpinning of a given cognitive feature in order to understand the evolution of cognition and behavior—needs to be reimagined.

Are plants sentient?

“…Some of these are resuscitated by signals such as blue light, known to involve ion flux (Trewavas, 2009). Associative, memory-based, forms of plant learning have recently been reported (Gagliano, 2017;Gagliano, Vyazovskiy, Borbely, Grimonprez, & Depczynski, 2016).…”

Lack of evidence for associative learning in pea plants

“…The December 2016 report of associative learning in plants has garnered substantial attention in the press (WNYC Studios, 2018; Morris, 2018;Berman, 2018), and the reported phenomenon is extremely interesting. Gagliano et al conclude this phenomenon will force us to reconsider the nature of learning (Gagliano, 2017) and we agree, contingent on the phenomenon being reproducible. Associative learning in the absence of traditional neurons must have a fascinating molecular mechanism and would open a new field of research.…”

“…Over the last decade, there has been substantial debate in neurobiology and philosophy of mind regarding what kinds of organisms possess the capacity to learn (Gagliano et al, 2016;Gagliano et al, 2018;Thellier, 2017;Gagliano, 2017), along with thornier issues like cognition (Garzó n, 2007;Gross, 2016;Adams, 2018;Segundo-Ortin and Calvo, 2019) and intelligence (Marder, 2013;Trewavas, 2017). Some of these disputes center around particular terminology and language, but some basic empirical questions remain contentious, including the simple question: can plants learn?…”

Pavlov’s pea plants? Not so fast. An attempted replication of Gaglianoet al. (December 2016)

“…The December 2016 report of associative learning in plants has garnered substantial attention in the press ( Smarty Plants | Radiolab | WNYC Studios ; Morris, 2018;robby-berman, 2018) , and the reported phenomenon is extremely interesting. Gagliano et al conclude this phenomenon will force us to reconsider the nature of learning (Gagliano, 2017) and we agree, contingent on the phenomenon being reproducible. Associative learning in the absence of traditional neurons must have a fascinating molecular mechanism and would open a new field of research.…”

“…Over the last decade, there has been substantial debate in neurobiology and philosophy of mind regarding what kinds of organisms possess the capacity to learn (Gagliano et al , 2016(Gagliano et al , , 2018Thellier, 2017;Gagliano, 2017) , along with thornier issues like cognition (Garzón, 2007;Gross, 2016;Adams, 2018;Segundo-Ortin and Calvo, 2019) and intelligence (Marder, 2013;Trewavas, 2017) . Some of these disputes center around particular terminology and language, but some basic empirical questions remain contentious, including the simple question: can plants learn?…”