Consciousness and Information Processing in Multicellular Organisms

Neurons may act as telegraph cells, rapidly processing information while other cells contribute slower but essential communication.

### Rethinking Consciousness: Information Processing Beyond Neurons
* 🧠 The idea that **consciousness could organize information processing** in brains may also apply to other cells, suggesting a **broader understanding of how organisms organize themselves**.
* 🔗 All cells can send **conditional signals to neighboring cells**, challenging the notion that only neurons are capable of **complex computations**.
* 🤔 Neuroscience traditionally holds that **only neurons compute**, but this perspective may overlook the potential for **other cells to contribute to cognitive functions**.
* 💡 Neurons may serve primarily as "**telegraph cells**," evolved to **transmit information rapidly** for muscle movement and decision-making, indicating a specific **evolutionary purpose**.
* ⚡ Neuronal communication occurs through **fast spike trains**, while intercellular communication is **much slower**, highlighting the **efficiency of the nervous system**.
* 🌱 The hypothesis suggests that multicellular organisms could develop their own models of reality through **slower information processing**, akin to a nervous system but at a **different speed**.
* 🌍 This view opens the possibility that plants and other organisms may have their own **operating systems for information transmission**, without the need for specialized nerve cells.
* 🧬 Overall, the scientific community may need to **cultivate a greater curiosity** about these alternative information processing systems across different cell types.

What if you know the consciousness could be the principle that organizes information processing in brains, could be the same principles or similar principles that work across other cells as well? Then the organism organizes itself. It's information processing. What we noticed is that all

cells can send conditional signals to neighboring cells, right? Not only neurons can do this, and so uh why is it that only brains are able to think and perform operations that allow brains to model reality and interact with it? Maybe other cells can do that too, right? Is this a revolutionary

idea for most cultures? It's not for Neuroscience. It is because Neuroscience knows only neurons can compute, for some reason I don't know why, uh and uh all the other cells that are adjacent to the neurons do not really contribute very much. Uh, on the other hand, we notice that

the ones of the other cells don't run in simulations. So basically, there is no model in neurons. It is complex enough to actually replicate learning and control as it happens in nervous systems. If you put this into a simulator, they're able to uh get abstract features of neurons,

right, and so on. And we see a lot of interesting things that we look at the connectome, but we cannot actually model the brain or a drop portion of it in an adequate way. But we actually have the neurons as switching units. And this could

be because our models are incomplete, but but it could also be because we are missing something. Maybe uh neurons are basically just telegraph cells. I suspect that neurons have evolved for a very particular purpose: to move our muscles very fast. And to do this, we basically

needed to build viruses into our organisms that translate information very, very quickly. They have a higher metabolic cost and they need to speak a specific code so it's stable over long distances. They basically speak in more "qu" to each other in these spike trains and these

spike trains are, uh, have different strains than the cellular communication to neighbors. If you just want to talk to your neighbors, there are many ways of doing this. You can elicit them a mechanical signals just by pushing at the membrane of another cell to can

exchange all sorts of chemicals. You even can send over RNA to send very complicated messages, but the spread of these CES is going to be limited by the jumping from cell to cell, and this means that CLE propagation is going to be like millimeters or centimeters per second at best,

which means it's magnitudes slower than what the nervous system. And so once you evolve the telegraph cells to move your muscles very fast to compete with other animals at a high metabolic cost, you also need to do perception and decision-making at the same rate. So you build an

information processing system out of telegraph cells, and this telegraph network is able to make sense of reality and control the organism very quickly. But this doesn't mean that the other cells do not have opinions as well, right? So it's quite conceivable that if you are a multicellular organism that lives

for long enough, that this makes the model of reality that allows this organism to discover itself and the world and solve problems in the same way as a nervous system would do. It's just going to be a couple magnitudes slower than our nervous systems operate, but

This is a hypothesis that, um, most of our science is very uncurious about, which is weird when you think about it, right? It makes sense that plants have operating systems similar to animals that run on them, but you, they would not need to use specific cell

types, so you don't need to look for nerves in plants. You also, for information transmission in our organism, is not always necessary, uh, dedicated cell types which do this because any kind of cell type can be recruited in sending information towards the organism.

Neurons are 'telegraph cells'

Joscha Bach Bits

Consciousness as a Principle of Information Processing

Consciousness may organize information processing in brains and potentially other cells.

Questioning why only brains think, suggesting other cells might process information similarly.

Neuroscience's limited view: only neurons compute, neglecting other cells' contributions.

Current models struggle to adequately replicate learning and control in nervous systems.

Neurons may be simplified as switching units in current models, potentially missing crucial aspects.

Hypothesis: neurons evolved primarily for fast muscle movement, using a high-cost, rapid information transfer system.

Neurons use spike trains for rapid communication, differing from slower methods used by other cells.

Other cells communicate via mechanical signals, chemical exchange, and RNA transfer, but slower than neuronal transmission.

Slower intercellular communication limits the speed of information propagation compared to the nervous system.

The Nervous System's Role and Other Cells' Potential

Fast muscle movement necessitates a fast information processing system built from telegraph cells (neurons).

Other cells may also contribute to a slower, but similar model of reality and problem-solving.

This hypothesis is largely unexplored in science.

Plants may have similar operating systems to animals, but without specialized cell types for information transmission.

Any cell type can potentially be recruited for organism-wide information transmission.