Biology in the 21st century: Natural selection is cognitive selection.

Natural selection has a formal definition as the natural process that results in the survival and reproductive success of individuals or groups best adjusted to their environment, leading to the perpetuation of those genetic qualities best suited to that organism's environmental niche. Within conventional Neo-Darwinism, the largest source of those variations that can be selected is presumed to be secondary to random genetic mutations. As these arise, natural selection sustains adaptive traits in the context of a 'struggle for existence'. Consequently, in the 20th century, natural selection was generally portrayed as the primary evolutionary driver. The 21st century offers a comprehensive alternative to Neo-Darwinian dogma within Cognition-Based Evolution. The substantial differences between these respective evolutionary frameworks have been most recently articulated in a revision of Crick's Central Dogma, a former centerpiece of Neo-Darwinism. The argument is now advanced that the concept of natural selection should also be comprehensively reappraised. Cognitive selection is presented as a more precise term better suited to 21st century biology. Since cognition began with life's origin, natural selection represents cognitive selection.

The sensual cell: Feeling and affect in unicellular species.

Our previous efforts to probe the complex, rich experiential lives of unicellular species have focused on the origins of consciousness (Reber, 2019) and the biomolecular processes that underlie sentience (Reber et al., 2023). Implied, but unexplored, was the assumption that these cognitive functions and associated unicellular organismal behaviors were linked with and often driven by affect, feelings, sensual experiences. In this essay we dig more deeply into these valenced (We're using the term valence here to cover the aspects of sensory experiences that have evaluative elements, are experienced as positive or negative ─ those where this affective, internal representation is an essential element in how the input is interpreted and responded to.) self-referencing features. In the first part, we examine the empirical evidence for various sensual experiences that have been identified. In the second part, we look at other features of prokaryote life that appear to also have affective, valenced elements but where the data to support the proposition aren't as strong. We engage in some informed speculation about these phenomena.

Why death and aging ? All memories are imperfect.

Recent papers have emphasized the primary role of cellular information management in biological and evolutionary development. In this framework, intelligent cells collectively measure environmental cues to improve informational validity to support natural cellular engineering as collaborative decision-making and problem-solving in confrontation with environmental stresses. These collective actions are crucially dependent on cell-based memories as acquired patterns of response to environmental stressors. Notably, in a cellular self-referential framework, all biological information is ambiguous. This conditional requirement imposes a previously unexplored derivative. All cellular memories are imperfect. From this atypical background, a novel theory of aging and death is proposed. Since cellular decision-making is memory-dependent and biology is a continuous natural learning system, the accumulation of previously acquired imperfect memories eventually overwhelms the flexibility cells require to react adroitly to contemporaneous stresses to support continued cellular homeorhetic balance. The result is a gradual breakdown of the critical ability to efficiently measure environmental information and effect cell-cell communication. This age-dependent accretion governs senescence, ultimately ending in death as an organism-wide failure of cellular networking. This approach to aging and death is compatible with all prior theories. Each earlier approach illuminates different pertinent cellular signatures of this ongoing, obliged, living process.

Sentient cells as basic units of tissues, organs and organismal physiology.

Cells evolved some 4 billion years ago, and since then the integrity of the structural and functional continuity of cellular life has been maintained via highly conserved and ancient processes of cell reproduction and division. The plasma membrane as well as all the cytoplasmic structures are reproduced and inherited uninterruptedly by each of the two daughter cells resulting from every cell division. Although our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of the very first cells is obscured by the extremely long timeline since that revolutionary event, the generally accepted position is that the de novo formation of cells is not possible; all present cells are products of other prior cells. This essential biological principle was first discovered by Robert Remak and then effectively coined as Omnis Cellula e Cellula (every cell of the cell) by Rudolf Virchow: all currently living cells have direct structural and functional connections to the very first cells. Based on our previous theoretical analysis, all cells are endowed with individual sentient cognition that guides their individual agency, behaviour and evolution. There is a vital consequence of this new sentient and cognitive view of cells: when cells assemble as functional tissue ecologies and organs within multicellular organisms, including plants, animals and humans, these cellular aggregates display derivative versions of aggregate tissue- and organ-specific sentience and consciousness. This innovative view of the evolution and physiology of all currently living organisms supports a singular principle: all organismal physiology is based on cellular physiology that extends from unicellular roots.

A revised central dogma for the 21st century: All biology is cognitive information processing.

Crick's Central Dogma has been a foundational aspect of 20th century biology, describing an implicit relationship governing the flow of information in biological systems in biomolecular terms. Accumulating scientific discoveries support the need for a revised Central Dogma to buttress evolutionary biology's still-fledgling migration from a Neodarwinian canon. A reformulated Central Dogma to meet contemporary biology is proposed: all biology is cognitive information processing. Central to this contention is the recognition that life is the self-referential state, instantiated within the cellular form. Self-referential cells act to sustain themselves and to do so, cells must be in consistent harmony with their environment. That consonance is achieved by the continuous assimilation of environmental cues and stresses as information to self-referential observers. All received cellular information must be analyzed to be deployed as cellular problem-solving to maintain homeorhetic equipoise. However, the effective implementation of information is definitively a function of orderly information management. Consequently, effective cellular problem-solving is information processing and management. The epicenter of that cellular information processing is its self-referential internal measurement. All further biological self-organization initiates from this obligate activity. As the internal measurement by cells of information is self-referential by definition, self-reference is biological self-organization, underpinning 21st century Cognition-Based Biology.

Cellular sentience as the primary source of biological order and evolution.

All life is cellular, starting some 4 billion years ago with the emergence of the first cells. In order to survive their early evolution in the face of an extremely challenging environment, the very first cells invented cellular sentience and cognition, allowing them to make relevant decisions to survive through creative adaptations in a continuously running evolutionary narrative. We propose that the success of cellular life has crucially depended on a biological version of Maxwell's demons which permits the extraction of relevant sensory information and energy from the cellular environment, allowing cells to sustain anti-entropic actions. These sensor-effector actions allowed for the creative construction of biological order in the form of diverse organic macromolecules, including crucial polymers such as DNA, RNA, and cytoskeleton. Ordered biopolymers store analogue (structures as templates) and digital (nucleotide sequences of DNA and RNA) information that functioned as a form memory to support the development of organisms and their evolution. Crucially, all cells are formed by the division of previous cells, and their plasma membranes are physically and informationally continuous across evolution since the beginning of cellular life. It is argued that life is supported through life-specific principles which support cellular sentience, distinguishing life from non-life. Biological order, together with cellular cognition and sentience, allow the creative evolution of all living organisms as the authentic authors of evolutionary novelty.

CBC-Clock Theory of Life - Integration of cellular circadian clocks and cellular sentience is essential for cognitive basis of life.

Cellular circadian clocks represent ancient anticipatory systems which co-evolved with the first cells to safeguard their survival. Cyanobacteria represent one of the most ancient cells, having essentially invented photosynthesis together with redox-based cellular circadian clocks some 2.7 billion years ago. Bioelectricity phenomena, based on redox homeostasis associated electron transfers in membranes and within protein complexes inserted in excitable membranes, play important roles, not only in the cellular circadian clocks and in anesthetics-sensitive cellular sentience (awareness of environment), but also in the coupling of single cells into tissues and organs of unitary multicellular organisms. This integration of cellular circadian clocks with cellular basis of sentience is an essential feature of the cognitive CBC-Clock basis of cellular life.

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains.

Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, such as diverse protists and algae, still live a cellular life. However, fungi, plants, and animals evolved a multicellular existence. Recently, we have developed the cellular basis of consciousness (CBC) model, which proposes that all biological awareness, sentience and consciousness are grounded in general cell biology. Here we discuss the biomolecular structures and processes that allow for and maintain this cellular consciousness from an evolutionary perspective.

Cognition in some surprising places.

The most widely accepted view in the biopsychological sciences is that the cognitive functions that are diagnostic of mental operations, sentience or, more commonly, consciousness emerged fairly late in evolution, most likely in the Cambrian period. Our position dovetails with James's below - subjectivity, feeling, consciousness has a much longer evolutionary history, one that goes back to the first appearance of life. The Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model is founded on the presumption that sentience and life are coterminous; that all organisms, based on inherent cellular activities via processes that take place in excitable membranes of their cells, are sentient, have subjective experiences and feelings. These, in turn, guide the context-relevant behaviors essential for their survival in often hostile environments in constant flux. The CBC framework is reductionistic, mechanistic, and calls for bottom-up research programs into the evolutionary origin of biological consciousness.

Searching for the impossible: Parapsychology's elusive quest.

Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a broad-based critique of the entire parapsychology enterprise. Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. In the classic English adynaton, "pigs cannot fly." Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects. What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Musing on Brooksian representationalism: a eulogy.

Lee Brooks was one of the more creative and focused cognitive psychologists of his generation. We shared many things, including being of the same generation. We differed on many issues but always with respect and affection. This essay celebrates his life.

The locus of focus: the effect of switching from a preferred to a non-preferred focus of attention.

Focusing strategies are known to play a significant role in motor performance, with individuals who use an internal focus on body movement typically showing poorer outcomes than those who focus on features of the external environment. Focus of attention and switching of one's focus are examined in the context of two different complex motor skills along with a factor not previously examined systematically, individual preference. In both experiments, participants were introduced to focusing strategies that might be employed when attempting a sensorimotor task. Explanations of both strategies were given to participants. Specifically, for an internal focus, participants were instructed to concentrate on their body movements, while for an external focus, they were instructed to focus on aspects in the environment. They were then asked which strategy they preferred. Participants then continued either with their preferred focus or were instructed to switch to their non-preferred focus. The advantage that the external focus typically enjoys turns out not to be a simple one and interacts with individual preference and with the "forced-opposite" manipulation. Our results support the growing consensus that encouraging individuals to adopt an internal focusing strategy is counterproductive in complex sensorimotor tasks. They also suggest that individual preferences play a role.

Some radical implications of Bach-y-Rita's discoveries.

Bach-y-Rita's clinical results in restoring lost sensory function are based on several phenomena not widely appreciated in cognitive science. First, there is volume transmission. Extensive laboratory observation has shown that the brain is much more than a network of synaptically connected neurons. Bach-y-Rita has found that a key implication of volume transmission is that it is a functional component in adult brain plasticity, also widely observed experimentally. Plasticity has led him to conclude that the structure of brain dynamics is beyond the scope of algorithmic computation. If the brain is not a computer, this insight would have a significant impact on the development of new technologies based on brain function. Bach-y-Rita's work is being extended from restoration of lost senses to the creation of new senses. This in turn could lead to a new technology of "wiring a human-in-the-loop" that would be utterly unlike any computationally based technology. Instead of mere interaction with a machine, the human "becomes one" with it.

Implicit preferences: the role(s) of familiarity in the structural mere exposure effect.

In four experiments using an artificial grammar (AG) learning procedure, the authors examined the links between the "classic" mere exposure effect [heightened affect for previously encountered stimulus items (Bornstein, 1989; Zajonc, 1968)] and the "structural" mere exposure effect [greater hedonic appreciation for novel stimuli that conform to an implicitly acquired underlying rule system (Gordon & Holyoak, 1983)]. After learning, participants: (a) classified stimuli according to whether they conformed to the principles of the grammar and, (b) rated them in terms of how much they liked them. In some experiments unusual and unfamiliar symbols were used to instantiate the AG, in others highly familiar characters were used. In all cases participants showed standard AG learning. However, whether the two exposure effects emerged was dependent on symbol familiarity. Symbols with high a priori familiarity produced a structural mere exposure effect. Moderately familiar symbols produced only the classic, but not the structural, mere exposure effect. Highly unfamiliar symbols produced neither exposure effect. Results are discussed in the context of implicit learning theory and implications for a general theory of aesthetics are presented.

Implicit learning in children and adults with Williams syndrome.

In comparison to explicit learning, implicit learning is hypothesized to be a phylogenetically older form of learning that is important in early developmental processes (e.g., natural language acquisition, socialization)and relatively impervious to individual differences in age and IQ. We examined implicit learning in a group of children and adults (9.49 years of age)with Williams syndrome (WS)and in a comparison group of typically developing individuals matched for chronological age. Participants were tested in an artificial-grammar learning paradigm and in a rotor-pursuit task. For both groups, implicit learning was largely independent of age. Both groups showed evidence of implicit learning but the comparison group outperformed the WS group on both tasks. Performance advantages for the comparison group were no longer significant when group differences in working memory or nonverbal intelligence were held constant.