ArticlePlant signaling & behavior2014
Plant anesthesia supports similarities between animals and plants: Claude Bernard's forgotten studies.
Article in Plant signaling & behavior, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Diethyl ether anesthesia inhibits phototropic response inPlant signaling & behavior · 2026Article
- T-Consciousness fields alter germination, growth, and biochemical responses of wheat (Plant signaling & behavior · 2026Article
- Synchronized Chromatin Reorganization as a Key Biomarker in Anesthetic Effects on Plants.Chemical & biomedical imaging · 2026Article
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part One.Biological theory · 2026Article
- All Organisms Can Be Anesthetized, but There's No Point?BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Mechanosensing and anesthesia of single internodal cells ofPlant signaling & behavior · 2024Article
- Toxic and signaling effects of the anaesthetic lidocaine on rice cultured cells.Plant signaling & behavior · 2024Article
- Touch, light, wounding: how anaesthetics affect plant sensing abilities.Plant cell reports · 2024Review
- On Effect of Chloroform on Electrical Activity of Proteinoids.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Fungi anaesthesia.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Article
- Individuality, self and sociality of vascular plants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Anaesthetics and plants: from sensory systems to cognition-based adaptive behaviour.Protoplasma · 2021Article
- Review
- Minimal physicalism as a scale-free substrate for cognition and consciousness.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Article
- Anaesthesia with diethyl ether impairs jasmonate signalling in the carnivorous plant Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula).Annals of botany · 2020Article
- The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Anaesthetics stop diverse plant organ movements, affect endocytic vesicle recycling and ROS homeostasis, and block action potentials in Venus flytraps.Annals of botany · 2018Article
- Senomic view of the cell: SenomeCommunicative & integrative biology · 2018Review
- Anesthetic Agents of Plant Origin: A Review of Phytochemicals with Anesthetic Activity.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The French scientist Claude Bernard (1813-1878) is famous for his discoveries in physiology and for introducing rigorous experimental methods to medicine and biology. One of his major technical innovations was the use of chemicals in order to disrupt normal physiological function to test hypotheses. But less known is his conviction that the physiological functions of all living organisms rely on the same underlying principles. He hypothesized that similarly to animals, plants are also able to sense changes in their environment. He called this ability "sensitivity." In order to test his ideas, he performed anesthesia on plants and the results of these experiments were presented in 1878 in "Leçonssur les phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végétaux." The phenomena described by Claude Bernard more than a century ago are not fully understood yet. Here, we present a short overview of anesthetic effects in animals and we discuss how anesthesia affects plant movements, seed germination, and photosynthesis. Surprisingly, these phenomena may have ecological relevance, since stressed plants generate anesthetics such as ethylene and ether. Finally, we discuss Claude Bernard's interpretations and conclusions in the perspective of modern plant sciences.
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