perceptronien
Perceptronien is a term used in theoretical neuroscience and speculative biology to describe a class of hypothetical organic neural networks that function similarly to artificial perceptrons yet evolve naturally within living systems. The concept arose in the early 21st century from interdisciplinary studies that sought to explain how simple organisms could perform pattern recognition tasks without complex circuitry. Researchers proposed that certain protists and bacteria might possess distributed computational units, termed perceptronien, capable of binary decision-making based on environmental stimuli.
These units are characterized by single input–output synapses and thresholding behavior reminiscent of the McCulloch–Pitts perceptron
The study of perceptronien intersects with synthetic biology, where engineered microorganisms are designed to incorporate programmable
While the existence of natural perceptronien remains theoretical, ongoing advances in high-resolution imaging and single-molecule analysis