The Origins of a New Branch of Science: Plant Neurobiology
Something you should know about me: I am a voracious learner. With three pairs of horns in my astrological signs—Taurus, Aries, Capricorn—when I decide I want to learn something, I am relentless in my research. It really doesn’t matter what it is, from cryptocurrencies to a language to the origin of the word foobar, I won’t stop until I feel like I can have a relatively intelligent conversation about the topic. When I first heard about Stefano Mancuso from the University of Florence and Plant Neurobiology, I had to know everything.
I started with the watered down articles found in most online news publications, and gradually worked my way through video presentations and all the way to technical papers. I did not have much experience with the scientific and technical jargon you find in academia, but that was not going to stop me. With the help of a few good dictionaries—because for this type of language, one is never enough—I launched myself on a quest to understand all I could about plant behavior and signaling.
What is Plant Neurobiology?
If you have followed the development of the branch of science called “Plant Neurobiology”, you will know that its definition is controversial even today. The most complete description I have found of this emerging science is by Paco Calvo in The Philosophy of Plant Neurobiology: a manifesto,
‘Plant neurobiology’ has emerged in recent years as a multidisciplinary endeavor carried out mainly by steady collaboration within the plant sciences. The field proposes a particular approach to the study of plant intelligence by putting forward an integrated view of plant signaling and adaptive behavior. Its objective is to account for the way plants perceive and act in a purposeful manner. But it is not only the plant sciences that constitute plant neurobiology. Resources from philosophy and cognitive science are central to such an interdisciplinary project, if plant neurobiology is to maintain its target well-focused.Not everyone is favorable to the idea that plants are intelligent and capable of complex decision making. If you think about it, accepting that plants are intelligent and rational beings would mean that we have to rethink our entire relationship with the plant world, from food to landscaping. Take a minute to contemplate that. You think animal rights is a difficult issue, what happens when you start to understand that the tulips you cut from the ground and put in a vase are alive, as is the salad on your plate. Oh, and if boiling live lobster for a fancy meal is a problem because they scream, what if I tell you that the roots of the veggies in your favorite stir-fry also emit a sound that communicates to others?!
Don’t panic… it is not as bad as you think. Plants are not humans nor animals, so their systems are completely different, which requires a completely new way of thinking. But this is exactly why it creates so much controversy. It is easy when we think that intelligence is marked by a brain, but researchers like Mancuso and M. Galiano are showing that this is not necessarily true. On the contrary, it could be that this brain-thing we humans have is our biggest weakness, since as we are seeing in movements such as blockchain, holocracy and no-management, decentralized is can be more efficient than centralized.
Back in 2003, when scientists and educators such as Mancuso, Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh from the University of Washington and Frantisek Baluska from the University of Bonn got together to found the Society for Plant Neurobiology, they were hit with a wall of resistance from the scientific community. Thirty-three researchers from universities around the world signed a letter opposing the whole plant neurobiology movement. They claimed that “Neurobiology—the detailed study of the nervous system and the brain—has nothing to do with plants, many of their colleagues argue; plants do not have nervous systems and making parallels between their signaling systems and those of animals is unwarranted, unscientific and misleading.”
The wall was so thick and tall, that much to the dismay of some members, they changed the name to the “Society for Plant Signaling and Behavior” in 2009. But Mancuso was not to be stopped. In 2005, amid the controversy, he founded the LINV: Laboratorio Internazionale di Neurobiologia Vegetale (International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology) to research and train researchers in cutting-edge, and often experimental, techniques of plant physiology, plant behaviour, molecular biology, stress physiology, plant signaling, etc. “Leopold Summerer, advanced-concepts team coordinator at the European Space Agency, remembers that the term "plant intelligence" raised a few eyebrows when collaboration with the lab was proposed – even on a multidisciplinary think-tank team that's used to pondering ideas out of left field. Nonetheless, Summerer says plant research may provide important ideas.”
Going from the lab into the field
And this year, Mancuso and Leonardo Chiesi, a sociologist and environmental designer from the school of architecture at the University of Florence and UC Berkey, kicked off Futuro Vegetale, a masters degree focused on plants and social innovation. This is how I found myself standing in the LINV. It was hard to contain my squeals of excitement seeing the Jellyfish Barge live, measuring the action potential response of a plant, and discussing the ethics around using plants to sequester heavy metals and then destroying them.
As I plan my projects for this year, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to lend my own research and ideas to the growing database of plant neurobiology. While plant signaling, plant behavior, plant communication, and even plant consciousness are all part of this discipline, we should not be afraid of a term just because it challenges our way of thinking. Evolution pushes us outside of our comfort zone—you are not going to discover something new doing what you have always done. And given the direction our planet is taking, our very survival relies on learning what makes plants—these amazing beings without conventional brains—more capable of adapting to environmental and social changes than humans and animals. Who better than one of the few beings to have survived every major extinction to teach us how to transform what seems like impending doom (cue Gir doom song from Invader Zim) to an opportunity to take a leap on the evolutionary ladder?!
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References
About Stefano Mancuso
About the Society of Plant Signaling and Behavior
The philosophy of plant neurobiology: a manifesto
Calvo, P. Synthese (2016) 193: 1323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1040-1
Smarty Plants: Inside the World’s Only Plant-Intelligence Lab
Digging Up The Roots of Intelligence: Plant Neurobiology: A Sapling Science
Learning by Association in Plants
Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 38427 (2016) doi:10.1038/srep38427
About Leonardo Chiesi
About Jellyfish Barge
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://tigrillagardenia.com/2018/03/origins-of-plant-neurobiology/
I do believe that plants have very sensitive mechanisms for detecting changes in their environment. They respond to touch, cold, heat, water deficits, pathogens, herbivore feeding, wounding etc. by altering ion transport across cell membranes, and by producing specific biochemicals including hormones such as jasmonic acid and abscisic acid. The hormones in turn have a profound effect on gene expression. I have to confess that I do prefer the name "Signaling and Behavior" over "Neurobiology" to explain these phenomena. But it is fascinating that many plants do produce molecules that are used by animals as neurotransmitters and which play a signaling role in the plants themselves (gamma-aminobutyrate (GABA) is just one example; Biancucci et al. (2015)). So I will definitely keep an open mind as you develop and pursue this field.
Mancuso dove into this topic the first day of class. His argument is multi-faceted, going from the fact that thinking that the human brain is the center of human behavior is limiting, since it has been shown that people who have lost large portions of their brains still express many cognitive functions associated to those specific areas. To the plant side, by showing that plants produce neuron-like molecules in the root apex transition zone; Baluška et al. (2004).
I wonder if all this focus on the brain has prevented us from really understanding how consciousness and behavior work?
I recently read Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life which talked about the fact that Octopuses do not rely on just their brains, and in many cases, the brain does not even track what the arms are doing. It is as if their brains and arms are "curiously divorced" (Cephalopod Behaviour, Hanlon and Messenger, 1998), which could lead to the brain emitting an order that the arms decide not to follow.
So what if this is the case for humans? What if our cognitive and behavioral functions are diffused, much like they are for plants?
When I used to teach people dream retention and astral travel, I often told them that an effective technique for remembering dreams and travels was to not move upon returning as they repeated they relived their experiences over and over again in their "minds". By not moving, they could tap into muscle memory, which is where much of this was stored. I never even though it in relation to the brain, given that it was considered common knowledge in spiritual circles.
Excellent points about cognitive and behavioral functions being diffused! The human gut is often referred to as the second brain. It produces most of the human body's serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine), and there is a profound effect of the gut microbiome on this (see e.g. Yang et al. (2015)). So our gut and its microbes have a significant effect on our behavior and physiology.
Exactly! And to think, we are only starting to explore the complex networks of relationships between organs, body parts, behaviors, and consciousness?! I have been talking to a researcher that wants to conduct experiments on plant consciousness, but to do that, I keep asking him to define human consciousness. A quick search on any of the leading publications sites on "human consciousness" will lead to hundreds of papers, many of which conflict one with the other. So imagine what will happen when we try to give a definition to plant consciousness? This is why at the LINV, the focus is to start with decision making and awareness. The more they show that plants can make decisions by analyzing a series of factors and consciously choosing one, then you have "awareness" which gets you closer to what is commonly thought of as "consciousness", don't you think?
I am glad to see that science is starting to look beyond the brain to understand human behavior. Personally, I think this is going to open the way for a whole new understanding of what makes people tick and the role of humanity in a much greater ecosystem... or at least I hope so!
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STOPFascinating subject. There are some who have proposed that the human brain is simply a transmitter/transceiver, that consciousness is not to be found in the physical structure of the brain. Perhaps, plant consciousness is the same. I mean, when you consider that all is energy it is not too odd to think that perhaps intelligence is working through the "energetic body" of all living creatures and that, the energetic body, is connected to an omnipresent ocean of intelligence.
From a spiritual side, I tend to agree with you. I think at some point science will catch up to the idea that energy is more than synapses firing and that intelligence is a flow we immerse ourselves into instead of a result of individual neural networks. I think we are a little far from there today, but a deeper understanding of the awareness and decision making capabilities--i.e. consciousness--of other beings will surely help scientists look to factors outside of brain functions to explain behavior. Exciting times...
I am a very curious person... always willing to learn new things. I mean my favorite gift for my 11th birthday was a subscription to National Geographic. However, I view the world through the eyes of a mystic. "Mystic" is not necessarily the best one word description of my personal experiential filter but is close. I'm a professional astrologer (I did notice your reference to three Signs of course). I communicate with the deceased (so far they have initiated contact). I see visions (these are quite different from dreams or imaginations). I frequently find myself in realms only accessible while in altered states of consciousness (I am discerning however and have checked and rechecked what I "see" or learn with well known scientists or physicists to validate what I experience. Anyway, there is an entire world of energetic reality we don't see or experience in what I call "slow time" (Einstein actually believed energy was "slowed down" so we could experience matter on this level of existence).
I think one day humanity will evolve or move into a state of higher consciousness where life in all its wonder will be experienced from an entirely expanded and different perspective. I get hints from the likes of Tesla, Einstein, Jung, Plank, Stanislav Grof and others that they have accessed these expanded realms. I take heart especially from Jung and Grof who constantly were investigating the infinite, the world of "limitless consciousness". No, I absolutely do not think we will find consciousness or intelligence in the physical composition of a plant, or animal or human for that matter. It would be like looking for an orchestra in your CD player.
Many blessings.
Aho!
Yes. Exactly. Thats a great quote. I'd love to belong to a community here on Steemit that shared their experiences along these lines. Of course what you are doing certainly qualifies. I think, frankly, that unless we humans find a path to higher consciousness were screwed. But thats another post. Blessings.
I would love to create a community here around topics that bring together science and spirituality. In my experience, the "spirituality" posts tend to be too far on one side. What I love about Damanhur is that it is all about blurring the edges--about using one to define the other, and vice versa.
It's been my experience that in reality the lines between science and spiritual understand are no longer there. It's been absolutely fascinating to come to know how they compliment each other. Yes, some on the spiritual path to own the path rather than share it. Much peace to you.