ReviewProtoplasma2021
Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness.
Review in Protoplasma, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- T-Consciousness fields alter germination, growth, and biochemical responses of wheat (Plant signaling & behavior · 2026Article
- Plant emotion revisited: toward a new conceptual framework.Protoplasma · 2026Review
- Plant "intelligence" and the misuse of historical sources as evidence.Protoplasma · 2025Review
- Don't jump the gun quite yet: aiming for the true target in plant neurobiology research.Protoplasma · 2025Article
- Understanding otherness-the anthropocentrism trap.Protoplasma · 2025Article
- Seed germination: influence of non-traditional regulating factors.Communicative & integrative biology · 2025Review
- Touch, light, wounding: how anaesthetics affect plant sensing abilities.Plant cell reports · 2024Review
- Recent advances of microneedles biosensors for plants.Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry · 2024Review
- Near and Dear? If animal welfare concepts do not apply to species at a great phylogenetic distance from humans, what concepts might serve as alternatives?Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Review
- Anesthesia for non-traditional consciousness.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Signaling and transport processes related to the carnivorous lifestyle of plants living on nutrient-poor soil.Plant physiology · 2021Review
- Intelligence without neurons: a Turing Test for plants?Protoplasma · 2021Article
- Debunking a myth: plant consciousness.Protoplasma · 2021Review
- Anaesthetics and plants: from sensory systems to cognition-based adaptive behaviour.Protoplasma · 2021Article
- Sensitive or sentient-a painful debate.Protoplasma · 2021Article
- Minimal physicalism as a scale-free substrate for cognition and consciousness.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.