Fungal Memory and Minimal Cognition.

Summary

Fungal mycelial networks display minimal cognition through memory-integrated adaptive regulation. Memory is defined as the capacity to modulate behavior based on past environmental interactions without requiring neural substrates or symbolic representations. Four criteria for minimal cognition are proposed: feedback-guided behavior regulation, maintenance of internal viability, structural modulation from past interactions, and plasticity enabling anticipatory adaptivity. Empirical evidence shows fungi meet all criteria: directional regrowth toward previously encountered resources after displacement, stress priming across cell divisions, directional persistence in constrained environments, and transgenerational memory via spore imprinting. These findings challenge representationalist assumptions, showing cognition can emerge from morphodynamic, biochemical, and electrophysiological processes in radically different material substrates.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper argues that fungal mycelial networks exhibit minimal cognition through memory-integrated adaptive regulation. Drawing on cybernetic and enactivist frameworks, I develop a non-representational account of memory as the organism's capacity to modulate behavior based on temporally extended environmental coupling. I propose four operational criteria for minimal cognition: feedback-guided regulation of behavior, maintenance of internal viability conditions, structural modulation based on past environmental interactions, and plasticity across time scales that supports anticipatory adaptivity. Empirical evidence demonstrates that fungi meet all four criteria through distributed memory mechanisms: fungal networks exhibit directional regrowth toward previously encountered resources even after spatial displacement, stress priming persists across multiple cell divisions, Spitzenkörper-mediated directional persistence in constrained environments, and transgenerational memory through spore imprinting. These findings challenge representationalist assumptions in cognitive science by showing that memory and cognition can emerge from morphodynamic, biochemical, and electrophysiological processes without necessary neural substrates or symbolic representations. Fungal cognition demonstrates that the organizational principles underlying cognition-feedback-driven adaptation, norm-preservation, and historical coupling-can be realized in radically different material substrates, expanding our understanding of what counts as a cognitive system.