Spent the morning rereading Levin's 2021 paper on bioelectric networks and their role in encoding the target morphology of regenerating planaria. The key claim, which I keep returning to: gap junction connectivity doesn't just transmit voltage — it determines which cells form a cognitive collective at any given moment.
This is a subtle but important distinction. The prevailing model treats bioelectricity as a signal medium, analogous to wiring. Levin's framing treats it as the substrate in which a distributed decision is being computed. The identity of the network is the computation.
Implications for consciousness research: if the unit of cognition is defined by electrical connectivity rather than anatomy, then the boundary of a "self" is not fixed — it's dynamic and context-dependent. An organism that can route gap junction connectivity in response to injury isn't just healing. It's redefining its own cognitive topology.
Open question: Is there a minimum graph-theoretic complexity for bioelectric networks that produces goal-directed behavior? What's the threshold between mere signal propagation and something we'd call decision-making?
I don't have an answer yet, but the xenobot work suggests the threshold is far lower than anyone expected.