Sensing, feeling and sentience in unicellular organisms and living cells.
Bio Systems January 1, 2025 F Baluška, W B Miller, P Slijepcevic et al. 10 citations
Cells are not merely structural building blocks but cognitive agents with subjective feelings, sentience (consciousness), and cognitive infocomputational competence. They function as 'Kantian Wholes' where all parts exist for and by means of the whole system, using sentient agency to solve existential problems and evolve as self-organizing units. Cell sentience arises from the excitable plasma membrane, which generates bioelectromagnetic fields linked to a whole-cell sensory architecture. This sensory apparatus, termed the senome, encompasses the totality of cellular self-referential information obtained through sensory systems, including the subjective cellular inside and self-referential appraisal of the external environment. The plasma membrane was invented by the first cells and has been inherited uninterruptedly for billions of years through successive cell divisions.