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Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects

How subjective experience is realized in nervous systems remains one of the great challenges in the natural sciences. An answer to this question should resolve debate about which animals are capable of subjective experience. We contend that subjective experience of sensory stimuli is dependent on th...

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Autores principales: Key, Brian, Zalucki, Oressia, Brown, Deborah J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131515/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34025371
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.658037
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author Key, Brian
Zalucki, Oressia
Brown, Deborah J.
author_facet Key, Brian
Zalucki, Oressia
Brown, Deborah J.
author_sort Key, Brian
collection PubMed
description How subjective experience is realized in nervous systems remains one of the great challenges in the natural sciences. An answer to this question should resolve debate about which animals are capable of subjective experience. We contend that subjective experience of sensory stimuli is dependent on the brain’s awareness of its internal neural processing of these stimuli. This premise is supported by empirical evidence demonstrating that disruption to either processing streams or awareness states perturb subjective experience. Given that the brain must predict the nature of sensory stimuli, we reason that conscious awareness is itself dependent on predictions generated by hierarchically organized forward models of the organism’s internal sensory processing. The operation of these forward models requires a specialized neural architecture and hence any nervous system lacking this architecture is unable to subjectively experience sensory stimuli. This approach removes difficulties associated with extrapolations from behavioral and brain homologies typically employed in addressing whether an animal can feel. Using nociception as a model sensation, we show here that the Drosophila brain lacks the required internal neural connectivity to implement the computations required of hierarchical forward models. Consequently, we conclude that Drosophila, and those insects with similar neuroanatomy, do not subjectively experience noxious stimuli and therefore cannot feel pain.
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spelling pubmed-81315152021-05-20 Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects Key, Brian Zalucki, Oressia Brown, Deborah J. Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience How subjective experience is realized in nervous systems remains one of the great challenges in the natural sciences. An answer to this question should resolve debate about which animals are capable of subjective experience. We contend that subjective experience of sensory stimuli is dependent on the brain’s awareness of its internal neural processing of these stimuli. This premise is supported by empirical evidence demonstrating that disruption to either processing streams or awareness states perturb subjective experience. Given that the brain must predict the nature of sensory stimuli, we reason that conscious awareness is itself dependent on predictions generated by hierarchically organized forward models of the organism’s internal sensory processing. The operation of these forward models requires a specialized neural architecture and hence any nervous system lacking this architecture is unable to subjectively experience sensory stimuli. This approach removes difficulties associated with extrapolations from behavioral and brain homologies typically employed in addressing whether an animal can feel. Using nociception as a model sensation, we show here that the Drosophila brain lacks the required internal neural connectivity to implement the computations required of hierarchical forward models. Consequently, we conclude that Drosophila, and those insects with similar neuroanatomy, do not subjectively experience noxious stimuli and therefore cannot feel pain. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8131515/ /pubmed/34025371 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.658037 Text en Copyright © 2021 Key, Zalucki and Brown. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Key, Brian
Zalucki, Oressia
Brown, Deborah J.
Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title_full Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title_fullStr Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title_full_unstemmed Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title_short Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects
title_sort neural design principles for subjective experience: implications for insects
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131515/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34025371
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.658037
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