Nikkei Science, August 2025 issue

[Promotion]

I submitted a comment in response to the feature article “Exploring the Origins of Cognition” published in the August 2025 issue of Nikkei Science, specifically under the section titled “Minds Everywhere.”

Nikkei Science August 2025 issue

Special Feature: Exploring the Origins of Cognition

Special Feature: Exploring the Origins of Cognition Even with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, we still do not fully understand our own intelligence. By examining the cognitive functions of living organisms from diverse perspectives—such as brain regeneration in planarians, intelligent behavior in plants and animals, and the interplay between AI and robotics—we may move closer to uncovering the essence of cognition in both humans and other animals.

Special feature: The origin of cognition: Minds every where by ROWAN JACOBSEN The planarian is nobody’s idea of a genius. A flatworm shaped like a comma, it can be found wriggling through the muck of lakes and ponds worldwide. Its pin-size head has a microscopic structure that passes for a brain. Its two eye-spots are set close together in a way that makes it look cartoonishly confused. It aspires to nothing more than life as a bottom-feeder.