Biological complexity: bacterial memory (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 15:53 (1452 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: “The ability to encode robust and persistent membrane-potential-based memory patterns could enable computations within prokaryotic communities and suggests a parallel between neurons and bacteria."

"Previous research by Süel and others has shown that bacteria use ion channels to communicate and suggested they might also have the ability to store information about their past states.”

"'When we perturbed these bacteria with light they remembered and responded differently from that point on.'"

DAVID: What is shown is ion channel perturbations which last for some period of time. It is not magical bacterial mentation, but a demonstration of how light affects bacterial membranes

dhw: What is shown is that bacteria have memory, store information, communicate, and change their behaviour according to the conditions. All of these are attributes we would normally associate with intelligence.

DAVID: Usual twist. The article shows exactly what happens physically in the ant membranes, a form of chemical memory, nothing more.

There are only two ways you can study any living being: 1) the material workings, and 2) the behavioural. How do you know that human memory, storage of information, communication, ability to change behaviour are not “nothing more” than chemical?