cells
Within the depth-psychology and cognitive-science corpus surveyed by Seba, ‘cell’ operates across several distinct registers that rarely converge but collectively illuminate the mind-body continuum. In neuroscience-oriented authors such as Kandel and Damasio, the cell is the irreducible material unit: a membrane-bounded metabolic agent whose electrochemical transactions constitute the physical substrate of memory, emotion, and selfhood. Here the cell is not mere container but active protagonist — capable, in Damasio’s arresting formulation, of something resembling ‘the will to live.’ Thompson, drawing on Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis, elevates the minimal cell to the paradigm case of life itself: a self-producing, boundary-maintaining system whose circular organisation anticipates cognition. McGilchrist extends this further, attributing to individual cells forms of memory, training, and purposive pursuit that challenge the sharp distinction between cellular and neural intelligence. Yalom deploys ‘cell’ in an entirely different register — the four-cell Johari window as a topographic device mapping the known, blind, secret, and unconscious regions of personality in group-therapeutic work. These readings together reveal a corpus in which the cell carries explanatory weight far exceeding its anatomical sense: it becomes the site where life, feeling, boundary, and selfhood first appear.
the single cell seems to have an attitude: it wants to live out its prescribed genetic allowance. Strange as it may seem, the want, and all that is necessary to implement it, precedes explicit knowledge and deliberation
Damasio argues that the single cell exhibits proto-intentional states — a ‘will to live’ — that are the evolutionary antecedents of conscious desire, positioning cellular life as the origin-point of mind.
, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010thesis
the cell embodies a circular process of self-generation: thanks to its metabolic network, it continually replaces the components that make up the membrane boundary
Thompson presents the minimal cell as the paradigm autopoietic system, whose circular self-production — membrane sustaining network sustaining membrane — constitutes the defining organisational logic of life.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
There is a basic formal organization of life, and its paradigm and minimal case is to be found in the single cell. A single-cell organism is a self-making or self-producing being.
Thompson grounds his autopoietic theory of life in the single cell as the minimal and paradigm instance of self-production, distinguishing it from mere reproduction.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
Living cells are smart: the ciliate Spirostomum has been shown to possess memory. It can be trained… This is a cell with a mind of its own.
McGilchrist challenges mechanistic models of the body by arguing that individual cells display memory, purposive pursuit, and autonomous agency, warranting a conception of the body as a community of intelligent entities.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Conceptualising the human body as a cooperative community of essentially autonomous entities gives us a more reasonable understanding than our modern models, which see the body as a collection of mechanical organs enclosed in skin.
McGilchrist extends cellular intelligence into a holistic organismic model, arguing that the cell’s autonomy demands a cooperative rather than mechanistic account of the body.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
there are aspects of cell life that suggest the presence of forerunners of a ‘feeling’ function. Unicellular organisms are ‘sensitive’ to threatening intrusions.
Damasio locates proto-feeling in cellular sensitivity to perturbation, proposing that the internal state changes of unicellular organisms are evolutionary precursors to neural affective states.
, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010thesis
the cell is the fundamental unit of life, the structural and functional basis of all tissues and organs in all animals and plants
Kandel establishes the cell as the foundational biological unit, providing the reductionist premise for his programme of tracing memory to cellular and molecular processes.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
how does the cell membrane regulate the change in sodium and potassium ion permeabilities? Hodgkin and Huxley postulated the existence of a previously unimagined class of ion channels, channels with hinged ‘doors,’ or ‘gates,’ that open and close.
Kandel traces the discovery of gated ion channels as the mechanism by which the cell membrane translates electrochemical gradients into the action potential, the basic currency of neural signalling.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
an imbalance in the concentration of ions inside and outside the cell could give rise to current across the membrane
Kandel reconstructs Bernstein’s insight that differential ion concentrations across the cell membrane generate the electrical potential foundational to all neural communication.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
Cell A, ‘Known to self and Known to others,’ is the public area of the self; cell B, ‘Unknown to self and Known to others,’ is the blind area; cell C, ‘Known to self and Unknown to others,’ is the secret area; cell D, ‘Unknown to self and Unknown to others,’ is the unconscious self.
Yalom deploys the four-cell Johari window as a psychotherapeutic topology mapping the self across axes of self-knowledge and social disclosure, using ‘cell’ as a structural metaphor for personality regions.
, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008supporting
bacterial cells cooperate with other cells so as to create the organelles of more complex cells… Nucleated cells, in turn, cooperate to constitute tissues, and later these tissues cooperate to form organs and systems.
Damasio frames cellular evolution as a progressive economy of cooperation in which cells surrender independence for collective efficiency, establishing the biological precedent for social and cultural organisation.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting
it proved possible for the first time in any animal to map the working synaptic connections between individual cells, which I could use as a method for working out the neural circuit controlling a behavior
Kandel describes his breakthrough in mapping invariant synaptic connections between identified individual cells in Aplysia, establishing the cellular basis of specific behaviours and ultimately of learning.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
According to the cell theory, all living things are made up of cells. Although this statement does provide a scientific criterion of life, it has shortcomings. It is based on the observation that no life on Earth has ever been found without cells.
Thompson critiques the cell theory as descriptively useful but explanatorily insufficient, motivating the turn toward autopoiesis as a principled account of what makes cellular organisation constitute life.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
five separate pulses of serotonin… strengthened the synaptic connection for days and led to the growth of new synaptic connections, an anatomical change that did involve the synthesis of new protein
Kandel demonstrates at the cellular level that the transition from short-term to long-term memory involves structural anatomical change — new synaptic growth — distinguishing functional from architectural plasticity.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
one region of these receptors protrudes from the outside surface of the cell membrane and recognizes signals from other cells, while another region protrudes from the inside of the cell membrane and engages an enzyme
Kandel explains metabotropic receptor architecture as a cellular transduction mechanism linking extracellular chemical signals to intracellular enzymatic cascades, underpinning the biochemistry of memory modulation.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
Cell immediately before dopamine addition. (Center) Cell 10 mins. after dopamine addition (Right) Cell 10 mins. after return to control medium.
Schore cites microstructural evidence that dopamine induces neurite retraction and recovery at the cellular level, linking neurochemical environment during early development to the structural growth of the prefrontal cortex.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
Unlike most other cells of the body which have a simple shape, nerve cells have highly irregular shapes and are surrounded by a multitude of exceedingly fine extensions known at that time as processes.
Kandel contextualises Cajal’s morphological discovery that nerve cells are structurally unique among body cells, setting up the neuron doctrine and the concept of connection specificity.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006aside
the receptor acts as a coincidence detector. It allows calcium ions to flow through its channel if and only if it detects the coincidence of two neural events, one presynaptic and the other postsynaptic.
Kandel presents the NMDA receptor as a cellular coincidence-detection mechanism that gates calcium entry conditional on simultaneous pre- and postsynaptic activity, embodying Hebbian learning at the molecular level.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
Each neuron has three main anatomical elements: (1) the cell body, which is the cell’s powerhouse and includes the cell nucleus and organelles such as mitochondria… (2) the main output fiber, known as the axon… and (3) input fibers, known as dendrites
Damasio provides an anatomical account of neuronal cell structure as the physical basis for the body-representing functions he assigns to neural networks.
, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010aside
a reverberatory circuit (RC) is a closed loop or chain of neurons… each cell stimulating the next one again and again in a recurring chain of activity
James introduces the reverberatory circuit as a model of sustained neural activity through recurrent cellular stimulation, anticipating later accounts of dynamic memory maintenance.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890aside