Shocking Discovery That Single Cells and Even Molecules Can Learn and Exhibit Memory

I can confirm. I can sometimes learn, too.

if you think about it, life would have never lasted as long as it has if single celled organisms couldnt learn

We are going on an adventure

Michael Levin out of Tufts University has many lectures and interviews on this topic and presents his research on his discoveries on this topic, which is definitely a paradigm shift for science. His research includes teaching cancer cells in animals to rejoin the collective of other non cancer cells through behavior type modification and taking seemingly non-related cells to get them to build other body parts etc. Probably the most amazing science stuff I've come across that has some potentially staggering implications. What's amazing is not the apparent behavior and getting them to do tricks, it's the apparent "mind" that they exhibit, such as with the pavlovian conditioning mentioned here. Levin talks cells ability to forgo immediate rewards for later higher rewards and many other things we associate with a human mind or behavior.

Anton is low-key one of if not the most prolific and high-quality science communicator around. Very very few channels where so many of the videos are genuinely extremely interesting and recent discoveries, while also being incredibly varied in topic, and absurdly consistent in the upload schedule.

Learning using calcium channels in very small organisms was discussed in detail in Determined by Sapolski. Not single cell or molecules, but not complex organisms and no brain.

This channel is amazing

From the moment I saw the title I thought this would be related to Michael Levin's work and lo and behold it is

Hi Anton, Since you mentioned opioids and how we don't understand the tolerance reversal part. Look up Ibogaine. If your heart is healthy, Ibogaine can reset your brain's receptors and in a 36 hour period it can completely remove all withdrawal symptoms and tolerance. Something to do with the NMDA system (I think). Love to see a video on that!

It's worth noting that we have had evidence of associative learning in plants for a while now, and that associative learning in single celled organisms has been proposed and studied before also. And in the late '70s single celled organisms were successfully trained via classical conditioning. Gagliano, et al 2016 Learning by Association in Plants (note that there is an older study from around 2003 or so showing similar findings, but I'm not finding it now) Fernando, et al 2008 Molecular circuits for associative learning in single-celled organisms Gandhi, et al 2007 Associative learning in biochemical networks Hennessey 1979 Classical conditioning in paramecia