ArticleBiology & philosophy
Moving and sensing without input and output: early nervous systems and the origins of the animal sensorimotor organization.
Article in Biology & philosophy. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Engineered Living Systems With Self-Organizing Neural Networks: From Anatomy to Behavior and Gene Expression.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Animal navigation without mental representation.Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences · 2026Article
- Early transitions in the evolution of cognition.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- The social origins of consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Resting-State Sensory-Motor Connectivity between Hand and Mouth as a Neural Marker of Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Psychosocial Stress, Cognitive Difficulties, Impulsivity, Depression, and Substance Use in Children.Journal of cellular neuroscience · 2025Article
- Ultrasonographic Contrast and Therapeutic Effects of Hydrogen Peroxide-Responsive Nanoparticles in a Rat Model with Sciatic Neuritis.International journal of nanomedicine · 2024Article
- Transitions in cognitive evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Review
- The Role of Information in Evolutionary Biology.Acta biotheoretica · 2023Article
- Cellular Competency during Development Alters Evolutionary Dynamics in an Artificial Embryogeny Model.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Article
- Towards the Idea of Molecular Brains.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Bioluminescence and Photoreception in Unicellular Organisms: Light-Signalling in a Bio-Communication Perspective.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Reafference and the origin of the self in early nervous system evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- The Energy Homeostasis Principle: A Naturalistic Approach to Explain the Emergence of Behavior.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2021Article
- Co-expression of synaptic genes in the sponge Amphimedon queenslandica uncovers ancient neural submodules.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Bodily Complexity: Integrated Multicellular Organizations for Contraction-Based Motility.Frontiers in physiology · 2019Article
- Ultrafast epithelial contractions provide insights into contraction speed limits and tissue integrity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Modelling the effects of short and random proto-neural elongations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
- Evolutionary convergence and biologically embodied cognition.Interface focus · 2017Review
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1 author.
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Abstract
It remains a standing problem how and why the first nervous systems evolved. Molecular and genomic information is now rapidly accumulating but the macroscopic organization and functioning of early nervous systems remains unclear. To explore potential evolutionary options, a coordination centered view is discussed that diverges from a standard input-output view on early nervous systems. The scenario involved, the skin brain thesis (SBT), stresses the need to coordinate muscle-based motility at a very early stage. This paper addresses how this scenario with its focus on coordination also deals with sensory aspects. It will be argued that the neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of the animal body. Instead of thinking about early nervous systems as being connected to the environment merely through input and output, the implication developed here is that early nervous systems provide the foundation for a highly specific animal sensorimotor organization in which neural activity directly reflects bodily and environmental spatiotemporal structure. While the SBT diverges from the input-output view, it is closely linked to and supported by ongoing work on embodied approaches to intelligence to which it adds a new interpretation of animal embodiment and sensorimotor organization.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.