ArticleeLife2021
Reconsidering the evidence for learning in single cells.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 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
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Learning in plants: A conceptual and experimental primer.Learning & behavior · 2026Article
- Continual decision-making dynamics across biological organisms.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Reductionism in Engram Neuroscience.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Review
- AP-1 mediates cellular adaptation and memory formation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Engineering Basal Cognition: Minimal Genetic Circuits for Habituation, Sensitization, and Massed-Spaced Learning.ACS synthetic biology · 2026Article
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part One.Biological theory · 2026Article
- Anticipation of periodic events influences cell motility in amoeba proteus.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Beyond computational equivalence: the behavioral inference principle for machine consciousness.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Review
- Trainable computation in molecular networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Stimulus-to-stimulus learning in RNNs with cortical inductive biases.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Harnessing the analog computing power of regulatory networks with the Regulatory Network Machine.iScience · 2025Article
- Plant intelligence dux: a comprehensive rebuttal of Kingsland and Taiz.Protoplasma · 2025Article
- Time-domain brain: temporal mechanisms for brain functions using time-delay nets, holographic processes, radio communications, and emergent oscillatory sequences.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2025Article
- The "plant neurobiology" revolution.Plant signaling & behavior · 2024Review
- Minimal motifs for habituating systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- AP-1 Mediates Cellular Adaptation and Memory Formation During Therapy Resistance.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Contiguity in perception: origins in cellular associative computations.Trends in neurosciences · 2024Review
- Cell motility: Bioelectrical control of behavior without neurons.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Cellular forgetting, desensitisation, stress and ageing in signalling networks. When do cells refuse to learn more?Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2024Review
- Perspectives on Principles of Cellular Behavior from the Biophysics of Protists.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The question of whether single cells can learn led to much debate in the early 20th century. The view prevailed that they were capable of non-associative learning but not of associative learning, such as Pavlovian conditioning. Experiments indicating the contrary were considered either non-reproducible or subject to more acceptable interpretations. Recent developments suggest that the time is right to reconsider this consensus. We exhume the experiments of Beatrice Gelber on Pavlovian conditioning in the ciliate
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.