Study
Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness
Taiz, Lincoln; Alkon, Daniel; Draguhn, Andreas; Murphy, Angus; Blatt, Michael; Robinson, David G.
Trends in Plant Science, 2019
A critical review by plant physiologists and neuroscientists of the claims made by the plant neurobiology programme, examining what the underlying anatomy and physiology can and cannot support, and what the animal comparisons actually require.
- Studied in
- Plantae
- Sample size
- critical review of the plant neurobiology literature
Plants have no structures analogous to the neural architectures associated with consciousness in animals: no neurons, no synapses, no centralised integrative organ, and no threshold-crossing recurrent networks. The electrical and chemical signalling plants do possess is real but operates at speeds and organisational levels that do not support the inference. The authors argue the sophisticated behaviour observed requires no such explanation.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Plant behaviour is fully explicable by signalling and physiology without invoking consciousness, and the terminology of plant neurobiology imports assumptions the evidence does not carry.
How NatureHQ reads it
Cited as a position paper, which is what it is — the authors are arguing a case and there are researchers who argue the other way. It is included because it states the anatomical facts plainly, and those are not in dispute even where the conclusions are. The framing NatureHQ takes from it is the last clause: sophisticated behaviour does not require consciousness as an explanation. A plant that grows towards light, defends itself faster after a first attack, and signals between leaves is doing all of that with mechanisms that are known and are not thought. The argument that it must be experiencing something is an inference, and an unnecessary one.
- A position paper in an active disagreement; other researchers reject its framing.
- Arguments about consciousness cannot be settled empirically in the way physiological claims can.
- Reviews the strong claims of one research programme rather than the whole plant-behaviour literature.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2019.05.008
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-11.