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Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness
Plants have a rich variety of interactions with their environment, including adaptive responses mediated by electrical signaling. This has prompted claims that information processing in plants is similar to that in animals and, hence, that plants are conscious, intelligent organisms. In several rece...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Vienna
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7907021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32880005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9 |
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author | Draguhn, Andreas Mallatt, Jon M. Robinson, David G. |
author_facet | Draguhn, Andreas Mallatt, Jon M. Robinson, David G. |
author_sort | Draguhn, Andreas |
collection | PubMed |
description | Plants have a rich variety of interactions with their environment, including adaptive responses mediated by electrical signaling. This has prompted claims that information processing in plants is similar to that in animals and, hence, that plants are conscious, intelligent organisms. In several recent reports, the facts that general anesthetics cause plants to lose their sensory responses and behaviors have been taken as support for such beliefs. These lipophilic substances, however, alter multiple molecular, cellular, and systemic functions in almost every organism. In humans and other animals with complex brains, they eliminate the experience of pain and disrupt consciousness. The question therefore arises: do plants feel pain and have consciousness? In this review, we discuss what can be learned from the effects of anesthetics in plants. For this, we describe the mechanisms and structural prerequisites for pain sensations in animals and show that plants lack the neural anatomy and all behaviors that would indicate pain. By explaining the ubiquitous and diverse effects of anesthetics, we discuss whether these substances provide any empirical or logical evidence for “plant consciousness” and whether it makes sense to study the effects of anesthetics on plants for this purpose. In both cases, the answer is a resounding no. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7907021 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Springer Vienna |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-79070212021-03-09 Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness Draguhn, Andreas Mallatt, Jon M. Robinson, David G. Protoplasma Review Plants have a rich variety of interactions with their environment, including adaptive responses mediated by electrical signaling. This has prompted claims that information processing in plants is similar to that in animals and, hence, that plants are conscious, intelligent organisms. In several recent reports, the facts that general anesthetics cause plants to lose their sensory responses and behaviors have been taken as support for such beliefs. These lipophilic substances, however, alter multiple molecular, cellular, and systemic functions in almost every organism. In humans and other animals with complex brains, they eliminate the experience of pain and disrupt consciousness. The question therefore arises: do plants feel pain and have consciousness? In this review, we discuss what can be learned from the effects of anesthetics in plants. For this, we describe the mechanisms and structural prerequisites for pain sensations in animals and show that plants lack the neural anatomy and all behaviors that would indicate pain. By explaining the ubiquitous and diverse effects of anesthetics, we discuss whether these substances provide any empirical or logical evidence for “plant consciousness” and whether it makes sense to study the effects of anesthetics on plants for this purpose. In both cases, the answer is a resounding no. Springer Vienna 2020-09-02 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7907021/ /pubmed/32880005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Review Draguhn, Andreas Mallatt, Jon M. Robinson, David G. Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title | Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title_full | Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title_fullStr | Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title_full_unstemmed | Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title_short | Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
title_sort | anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7907021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32880005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9 |
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