Michael Levin: Intelligence Beyond the Brain

*Intelligence Beyond the Brain: morphogenesis as an example of the scaling of basal cognition* *Description:* Each of us takes the remarkable journey from physics to mind: we start life as a quiescent oocyte (collection of chemical reactions) and slowly change and acquire an advanced, centralized mind. How does unified complex cognition emerge from the collective intelligence of cells? In this talk, I will use morphogenesis to illustrate how evolution scales cognition across problem spaces. Embryos and regenerating organs produce very complex, robust anatomical structures and stop growth and remodeling when those structures are complete. One of the most remarkable things about morphogenesis is that it is not simply a feed-forward emergent process, but one that has massive plasticity: even when disrupted by manipulations such as damage or changing the sizes of cells, the system often manages to achieve its morphogenetic goal. How do cell collectives know what to build and when to stop? Constructing