ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
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Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploring emotional expression in invertebrates: mechanisms, functions and phylogeny.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Social information about others' affective states in a human-altered world.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Review
- Stress, Well-Being, and Reproduction in Wildlife.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- From chemistry to cognition: the adaptive origins of consciousness under constraint.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Phenomenal interface theory: a model for basal consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The exploration of consciousness in insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Consciousness at sea.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Honeybee Sentience: Scientific Evidence and Implications for EU Animal Welfare Policy.Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Trajectories of Consciousness: From Biological Foundations to Technological Horizons.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Interpreting insect behavior through the lens of executive functions.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Defending and refining the BirchAnimal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Review
- Review
- Neuroscience of animal consciousness: still agnostic after all.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Modelling developments in consciousness within a multidimensional framework.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Grinding as a slaughter method for farmed black soldier fly (Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Article
- Behavioural Indicators of Pain and Suffering in Arthropods and Might Pain Bite Back?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Why it hurts: with freedom comes the biological need for pain.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Rethinking Vision and Action.Annual review of psychology · 2023Review
- The evolutionary origins of the Global Neuronal Workspace in vertebrates.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2023Review
- When philosophical nuance matters: safeguarding consciousness research from restrictive assumptions.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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2 authors.
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Abstract
How, why, and when consciousness evolved remain hotly debated topics. Addressing these issues requires considering the distribution of consciousness across the animal phylogenetic tree. Here we propose that at least one invertebrate clade, the insects, has a capacity for the most basic aspect of consciousness: subjective experience. In vertebrates the capacity for subjective experience is supported by integrated structures in the midbrain that create a neural simulation of the state of the mobile animal in space. This integrated and egocentric representation of the world from the animal's perspective is sufficient for subjective experience. Structures in the insect brain perform analogous functions. Therefore, we argue the insect brain also supports a capacity for subjective experience. In both vertebrates and insects this form of behavioral control system evolved as an efficient solution to basic problems of sensory reafference and true navigation. The brain structures that support subjective experience in vertebrates and insects are very different from each other, but in both cases they are basal to each clade. Hence we propose the origins of subjective experience can be traced to the Cambrian.
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