In the summer of 2026, the results of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (IIT Mandi) spread through scientific and popular publications. A group led by the institute's director, Lakshmidhar Behera, and Professor Chayan Kanti Nandi used live-cell microscopy to observe the roots of tomatoes and eggplants while the plants were exposed to anesthetics.
The results are described in two papers. In the first, published in the journal Advanced Biology in 2025, a "hierarchical" sequence of organelle shutdown was recorded: mitochondria, lysosomes, intracellular transport systems, chloroplasts, and the nucleus. When the anesthetic is removed, recovery proceeds in the reverse order, and it is the nucleus that coordinates the cell's return to normal.
The second paper, published in Chemical & Biomedical Imaging on 19 March 2026, concerns the nucleus itself: under anesthesia, euchromatin, that is, the active part of the DNA, shifts synchronously toward the periphery of the nuclei in different cells, while the inactive heterochromatin remains in place. The authors propose that this rearrangement be considered a possible biomarker of the anesthetized state, common to neural and non-neural systems.
An important caveat: the authors themselves do not claim to have found signs of subjective experience. The abstract of the second article states that organelle disturbances intensify when ATP synthesis is suppressed, and therefore reflect the cell's energy vulnerability rather than mechanisms unique to neurons. According to their data, chromatin rearrangement does not depend on ATP. The experiments used the local anesthetic lidocaine and the general anesthetics etomidate and propofol. The interpretation of the "nonlocal" coherence of nuclei, which Behera considers consonant with the Indian Knowledge System (IKS), should be taken as the project leader's interpretation rather than as a conclusion that follows directly from the data.
Classical theories of consciousness, from global workspace theory to integrated information theory, were long built around neural structures. Giulio Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) looks markedly different in this sense: in it, consciousness is identified with integrated information, described by the quantity Φ, and the theory does not tie it to neurons as such.
But there is also a significant limitation: IIT requires physical integration specifically, not merely functional integration. The substrate, therefore, need not be neural, but the structure of causal connections must be present. Thus the synchronous dynamics of plant cells do not refute IIT; rather, they force a clarification of which patterns of integration are sufficient for phenomenal consciousness. The theory itself has already been tested against unexpected implications: the researcher Scott Aaronson showed that, by its logic, even a simple two-dimensional grid of logic gates could possess a high Φ, and Tononi acknowledged that the conclusion was drawn correctly.
The objection remains strong. Electrical signals in plants mainly solve applied physiological tasks: they close stomata, redistribute substances, and respond to damage. They do not transmit information throughout the entire system, as global workspace theory assumes. Skeptics, among them Lincoln Taiz and co-authors in Trends in Plant Science (2019) and John Mallatt and colleagues in Protoplasma (2021), point out that plants have no neurons and no structures that could be compared to an animal brain, and that claims about plant consciousness so far rest on weak evidence.
In 2020, the article "Anesthetics and plants: no pain, no brain, and therefore no consciousness" was published in Protoplasma; it examines the same logic as the new research: from plant responses to anesthetics to conclusions about consciousness. Finally, the study returns to the controversial "root-brain hypothesis," according to which the root apex functions as a decentralized center of information processing.
Imagine the water-supply network in a multi-story building: if you close one tap on a lower floor, the pressure will drop upstairs as well, even though the system has no central "brain." The water, of course, feels nothing because of this. Plants are organized similarly: a signal spreads without a command center, but such a mechanism by itself does not yet make an organism conscious.
If such mechanisms really do point to primitive forms of integration, the question of consciousness ceases to be the business of neurobiologists alone. It concerns which temporal and causal patterns in living systems generate experience and whether they exist without neurons. There is still no answer, and that is precisely why further experiments matter more than loud conclusions.
