Forms of life, forms of mind

A talk on Bioelectricity with a special slant towards immunology and the concept of hacking

Published by

Mike Levin

November 5, 2023

This is a 1-hour talk I gave in November, 2023 on bioelectricity as the cognitive glue of morphological architecture, but it was for a department of microbiology and immunology (and infectious disease), so I also mentioned some issues such as:

bioelectrical control of innate and adaptive immune system
invasion and parasitism and the need for all agents to know the borders between them and the outside world (and, whether the thoughts/signals/processes going on inside them belong “to them” vs. being imposed by an exploitative agent from the outside – learning v. being trained)
more generally the concept of hacking, and the idea that bioengineers aren’t the only ones that hack the competencies of our reprogrammable hardware, but that life is doing this all the time – both vertically (higher levels of organization bending the energy landscape for their parts) and horizontally (cells and tissues hacking each other, and competition among organs in vivo)
bioelectricity as a convenient interface for cross-level hacking

Here’s the Q&A after:

27 responses to “A talk on Bioelectricity with a special slant towards immunology and the concept of hacking”

Alain Schaerer

November 5, 2023

You mentioned light as a communication medium. Would you mind elaborating on that?

Also, have you looked at mechanical interventions as a medium? If imagine that is probably hard to do with animals as you cant tell them to do a certain movement a certain way.

Thank you for your work, its appreciated. I will be following closely.

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 5, 2023
  
  With respect to light, there is a whole field of research focused on ultraweak photon emission between cells and even between organisms. Started by one of my all-time scientific heroes, Alexander Gurwitsch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gurwitsch) the field of biophotons research has significantly expanded. It’s pretty clear that living systems communicate via biophotons, but decoding it is still the major open frontier. With respect to mechanical, yes – we’re working on the use of induced mechanical vibrations to communicate with the biomechanical interface of cell collectives, like we have been with the bioelectric (and others have with the biochemical).
  
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  1. Alain Schaerer
    
    November 5, 2023
    
    Thank you gor that. I will start studying it.
    
    Reply
Alain Schaerer

November 5, 2023

One more question.
You mentioned that you have to injure the organism before it uses the new electrical pattern. What is the definition of injury here?

I have found that we can make anatomical changes without having to severly injure somebody like cutting off a limb. Now that I think about it, Id imagine that from mechanical stimuli and training, there will still be microinjuries which would trigger the anatomical change? Not sure.

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 5, 2023
  
  Tissues seem to need to be in active remodeling (i.e., they need to measure a delta between the state they want to be in, and the state they’re in right now) to pay attention to bioelectrical cues (and maybe other kinds too, not sure). That error perception (a.k.a., stress) can be caused by injury but also by many other things, including metamorphosis, embryogenesis, cancer, wound healing, possibly microtrauma, etc. A full understanding of when tissues do and don’t consult their pattern memories is a very active line of work, but many unknowns.
  
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  1. Alain Schaerer
    
    November 5, 2023
    
    Got it! Thanks for your work again.
    
    Reply
  2. Matt
    
    November 6, 2023
    
    Planaria and amphibians you work with(?) do have by default this ability to trigger regeneration when injured. Is this a difficulty to port this work to mammals or do they switch to “active remodelling” in the same way (in which case why don’t the tissue regenerate, is it because they have difficulty accessing the pattern memory or do cells feel like they don’t have to do anything about that delta?)
    
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Mirka

November 5, 2023

How do you “read” what should be done with a particular type of tumor (type of cancer cells). Or is it different for every individual case of cancer?

How difficult is to bring this approach into clinical practice/using electroceuticals on humans? Do you think AI can speed this process up? Thank you, your work is just “WOW” 🙂

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 5, 2023
  
  Excellent question. We are not sure yet whether different types of states will have to be imposed on different types of tumor cells. My guess right now is that we won’t have to micromanage it – the idea is to have the other cells tell them what to do, which means, we need to electrically reconnect them to the cellular network and they become part of the collective that is following a large goal (organ generation and upkeep). I suspect this will be a general type of approach. As for clinical practice, we’re moving in that direction now. We’ve already done some of this with human glioblastoma and breast cancer (see some papers at https://drmichaellevin.org/publications/cancer.html and a talk that mentions this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5VI0u5_12k ). I do think AI will speed this process up, by letting us process the signals from cells and decode what the collective is thinking under normal and cancerous (and pre-cancerous) conditions.
  
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  1. Bob Averill
    
    November 5, 2023
    
    Do you feel that the data point to the bioelectric field observing itself (self-reflective emergent property) or something else observing the bioelectric field (perhaps another quantum energy field hidden in the dark energy/matter perhaps which embues all conscious entities with the observational power of subjective awareness)?
    
    Reply
    1. Mike Levin
      
      November 5, 2023
      
      I do think the bioelectric network observes itself. I don’t have any data for (or expertise in) quantum energy fields or dark energy/matter so I couldn’t say anything about those.
      
      Reply
  2. Mirka
    
    November 5, 2023
    
    Thanks! I see. So the signal for the tumor is more like “you are not separate, you are part of .. this tissue, behave accordingly ..”.
    
    .. reminds me a little bit of the descriptions of nondual psychical state (overcoming separation, enlightenment). Like, could it be also induced by ion channels in brain. Sorry if the association is too crazy 🙂
    
    Reply
Stoyan

November 5, 2023

In a different level of abstraction, we are as concsious as our receptors allow us to be. The observing seems to be important for computationally bound beings as us. Do You think that the work of Stephen Wolfram (Physics project) can be helpful in Your field?

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 5, 2023
  
  The observing is key (https://www.mdpi.com/2313-7673/8/1/110/htm and two of my favorite thinkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mitw2XcXY98). I don’t know enough about the recent Wolfram work to say, but look forward to digging into it eventually.
  
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Tigran Bleyan

November 5, 2023

What are the impacts you think of this bioelectrical effect on development on bacteria and fungi? Is there not enough of a possibility space for single celled bacteria?

Thank you Dr. Levin for sharing your work and time! You take on a lot to repeat your findings to new listeners. I’ve read Bioelectricity’s articles on Microbial Electrophysiology and wonder what we can change for bacteria and with what stimulus.

Continue the great work!

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 5, 2023
  
  Thanks. Fungi: look at the work of Neil Gow such as https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03746609508684833 ; bacteria, some amazing recent work by https://suellab.github.io/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21764748 .
  
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  1. Tigran Bleyan
    
    November 5, 2023
    
    I’ve got plenty to look into! Thank you once again.
    
    Sharing this with peers. How best can we support you?
    
    Reply
wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

Well Mike, on the one hand your argument that there is a continuous process from fertilized oocyte to organism with no lighting bolt is very well taken. On the other Rosen argument that life/mind are different in kind looks pretty rigorous as he developed it. For me the resolution has to be some form of panexperientialism…it has to be agency and experience all the way down.

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wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

Indeed, the hardware in biology is quite good enough and I conjecture it is universal in terms of problems solving in any space whatsoever. Perhaps it’s time to leave the hardware alone and concentrate exclusively on software.

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wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

…btw, with respect to the combination problem that arises in panexperientialism, I conjecture this is fundamentally a software question.

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wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

Question: with to cancer. The approach your on now is great for early detection and reversion to well behaved cells is already amazing. Do you have any thoughts on how we might address metastatic cancer at the software level. Nothing immediately suggests itself to me.

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wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

One wild idea, may not be possible, but how about smart machines that can recognize cancer cells and inject ion Chanel drugs or rna to revert these cells wherever they may be to electrical connectivity?

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wayne Lewis

November 5, 2023

One more question; in planaria it’s clear how wild type set points can be heritatable. But in organisms that develop from fertized embryos it must be somehow inherited via the ovum?

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1. Mike Levin
  
  November 11, 2023
  
  Yes. We do not yet know if this information is passed on during normal sexual reproduction (but we have some tantalizing clues that body bioelectrics can impact the cytoplasm and other epigenetic factors in the germline so it’s not impossible that some of it can pass on; see also the awesome work on transgenerational inheritance by Oded Rechavi).
  
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luke

December 15, 2023

Michael,

Does it scare you that cognition, biohacking, and the formation and dissolution of selves/minds is so ubiquitous throughout the world (assuming your work and interpretations prove true)?

As someone quite introspective and familiar with the introspective traditions of the world, it’s quite clear to me so much of what we experience, ‘physically’ and ‘mentally’, if such a distinction is still tenable, is entirely out of our control, or at best negotiable. To see your work, which is very impressive, scares me in that it shows just how many forces are at play, even deeper than what we can be aware of introspectively. Who’s to say what terrible things could happen to us at any time, or post-mortem?

I hope you can give me some solace that there are actions we can take to direct our flow towards a safer and peaceful state, larger than just this life. It feels to me we’re at the mercy of the currents of the universe and I feel very vulnerable and unsafe. I’ve never been able to convince myself of the more metaphysical aspects of spiritual traditions. Certainly not that of judgement or cosmic cause and effect, in large due to the vast discrepancies between the moral preachings and the actions of so-called holy men. But I find myself adrift without some post-mortem belief, hope, or goal to be soothed by and strive towards.

In short, your work has invoked a deep sense of defenseless horror within me, without much counterpoint of freedom, agency, and safety. This isn’t meant to be a criticism or anything. I apologize if it sounds negative or blaming. I also apologize if this is out of line and too personal, or irrelevant to your work.

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1. Mike Levin
  
  December 15, 2023
  
  This is a fairly common question I get, and I think it is really important. So much so, that I wish I had better skills for transmitting my sense of meaning to people who are disturbed by scientific progress (not just my work). Richard Watson and I, and other collaborators at https://apparentselves.org/, are working on some pieces to begin to address the “crisis of meaning”, which is due a very 1-sided understanding of life and mind that has developed over the last century or so. In the meantime, here’s what I can say. Although I cannot formally prove it to the satisfaction of anyone determined to stay in a negative frame, I think the possibilities that are beginning to be revealed by the modern synthesis offer much positivity to counteract the issues you raise. On the one hand, I certainly can’t dissolve the fact that “Who’s to say what terrible things could happen to us at any time” – that is part of being a vulnerable, living being. And some people have used the “inevitability of suffering” to motivate approaches such as stoicism and Buddhism. Those are valuable, I think (not necessarily in terms of a complex religious cosmology or rituals, but in terms of practical, personal protocols for improving lived experience). But even more important, I think, is the realization that the only way out of the feeling of powerlessness and despair is through the science that gives us more agency in the world. Think of what life was like – at one point, a stupid cut to the skin or a broken bone could be a death sentence via infection, sepsis, etc. We had no clue about the forces, in the environment and within our own bodies/minds, which controlled every aspect of our experience. What science is offering is increased agency by understanding – we gain freedom by understanding how we, and the world around us (and within us) works, to enable us to make of our lives what we will, not what random chance happened to hand us. This is a very positive vision which inspires me and it should inspire you: progress of knowledge means, we gain the responsibility for asking what our lives should look like, and less being constrained by random circumstances. More specifically, all of our work in the diverse intelligence field is showing us how minds embody in the world, which not only will enable us to be in better control of ourselves (and our various cognitive modules, which otherwise run the show) but also to relate with more understanding and compassion to the minds around us. I interpret the most exciting advances of the last few decades to point to increasingly more freedom, more agency, more opportunity for growth (both personal and species-wide). Of course, that means, more responsibility to figure out what is a life worth living and what outcomes maximize the meaning we can generate and experience in our limited sphere. I can’t go through all the details of this in a brief reply, but I (and others) are working on a book on all this, which I think will be a valuable resource for people left adrift by the popular (but wrong) modern stories of determinism and insignificance.
  
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Bob Averill

December 17, 2023

Hi Mike, re: bioelectricity, I found this interesting. Aren’t EEG waves just a form of bioelectricity, after all? WRT consciousness, I’m beginning to think it’s bioelectric turtles all the way down!

Link: Portable, non-invasive, mind-reading AI turns thoughts into text

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-12-portable-non-invasive-mind-reading-ai-thoughts.amp

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