Perceptive Levels in Plants: A Transdisciplinary Challenge in Living Organism’s Plasticity

Abstract

Is a minimal ‘cognitive’ perception of the world by lower organisms possible? The aim of this paper is to evaluate the ability of the plant kingdom to treat information without the nervous system. On the basis of experimental results on plant bioelectrical potentials and on the analysis of extended cognitive levels defined in the emergent plant neurobiology paradigm, these organisms are considered: (1) as possessing dynamic integrated perceptive systems close to those of animals, (2) as self-organized entities with protoneural abilities and (3) as expressing primitive generic processes which have nonlinearly conducted to complex brain networks. This approach permits a new bottom-up investigation of plastic interfaces,  particularly at the level of perceptive and knowledge accumulating systems. Providing the great value of early sensory processing in plants is accepted, the only way to progress would be to read the emergent behaviors of complex informational systems co-creating the world through a transdisciplinary framework.