Stefano Mancuso is a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, which explores signalling and communication at all levels of biological organisation, from genetics to molecules, cells and ecological communities.
His concept of plant sentience challenges the assumption that plants do not communicate and that they are subordinate to the animal kingdom. The study of ‘plant memory’ and the capacity to form and alter habits suggests a level of biological organisation that opens fascinating new possibilities for scientific discourse.
His vision, timely in the age of neural networks, considers how plants function as communities and can alter their behaviour based on shared information.