Ricard Solé

We must find the way to end up all this.

Single-celled organism with no brain is capable of Pavlovian learning A trumpet-shaped, single-celled organism seems able to predict one thing will follow another, hinting that such associative learning emerged long before multicellular nervous systems

This is an awesome discovery:
A single-celled organism with no brain called Stentor seems capable of Pavlovian learning. Yes, it can actually learn to associate two things despite having no neurons.

My latest for @newscientist.com. 🧪 #science #memory #learning
www.newscientist.com/article/2519...

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Since she was in graduate school, Laura Monk has been developing mathematical theories that Maryam Mirzakhani didn’t have a chance to finish before her death. Monk feels she’s gotten to know the mathematician through her proofs. www.quantamagazine.org/years-after-...

‘Insane’ images depict ant species in stunning 3D New method for visualizing organisms opens the door for mass digitization efforts

‘Insane’ images depict ant species in stunning 3D | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Can we engineer the resilience of fragile ecosystems? In this paper with @vmaull.bsky.social @lizashpilkina.bsky.social & @vdlorenzo.bsky.social, we discuss "Emergent Bioengineering" bringing together complexity, #synbio and ecology across scales www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

‘Super agers’ with great memory have more young brain cells Older people with exceptional memory have a surprisingly high number of young neurons, a study finds

Older people with exceptional memory have a surprisingly high number of young neurons, a study finds

Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs | Quanta Magazine Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.

Sometimes, the only way to build back up is to let everything fall apart. This is certainly true at the cellular level. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

This Thursday I'll be at @museuciencies.cat discussing chaos theory, time and its implications with @evamirandag.bsky.social and @ricardsole.bsky.social. Looking forward to it!

museuciencies.cat/activitats/2...

Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide.

Physicists often must switch between two frameworks: quantum for small stuff, classical for big. Can the idea of decoherence be the bridge?

“If you removed all people from the planet, Hawaii would be on a completely different evolutionary ecological trajectory". This article by @interspecies.agency explains how Hawaii's so-called ‘freakosystems’ offer an unsettling glimpse of the future. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Preparing my talk in Heidelberg on Cognition Spaces for the @embo.org @embl.org conference, “Collectivity in Living Systems: Emergence, Function, and Evolution.”
An exciting program with outstanding speakers and a great chance to catch up with old colleagues. www.embl.org/about/info/c...

It’s an RNA world. RNA is posited to be the first genetic material, arising 4 billion years ago. It can store information and act as an enzyme. Eventually, it duplicated its information into a more stable form, DNA.

I have two small closed microcosms at home that have already experienced several collapses. My mistake—I left them in the dark more than once, triggering major shifts. And yet, they persist, after two years: algae, small protozoa, and unseen bacteria continue to thrive.

Noise is key to evolution; entropy is key to metabolism. We have to stop pretending that biology fights against these things rather than relying on them!

Can randomness drive the evolution of microbiomes? In this paper, a new eco-evolutionary framework shows that environmental fluctuations can trigger host-level selection. Stochastic assembly isn’t noise: it’s the key.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @andreatabi.bsky.social @vmaull.bsky.social

Is time a fundamental part of reality? A quiet revolution in physics suggests not The puzzle of time remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics

The puzzle of time remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics

La teoria del caos va revolucionar la ciència en mostrar que el món pot ser, alhora, profundament matemàtic i sorprenentment imprevisible. Aquesta conversa forma part del cicle d’activitats de l’exposició «La invenció del temps». museuciencies.cat/exposicio_te... @icreacommunity.bsky.social

Podem predir el futur mitjançant les matemàtiques? Què ens diu la teoria del caos? Quins són els límits de la nostra capacitat de predir la complexitat? Parlarem amb Doyne Farmer, un dels pares de la teoria, i amb la matemàtica Eva Miranda @evamirandag.bsky.social
museuciencies.cat/activitats/2...

As the authors say: "The discovery of this complex activity in a small ribozyme suggests that polymerase ribozymes may be more abundant in RNA sequence space than anticipated, thereby facilitating the emergence of self-replication."

Could life have begun with simpler molecules than we once thought? A new paper in @science.org by @edogia.bsky.social shows that a tiny RNA catalyst can self-replicate itself, suggesting that life may have been easier to emerge than expected. Getting closer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What if we had a Rosetta Stone for brain oscillations—one framework to translate between models and scales?
In this paper lead by F Castaldo and @ruffini.bsky.social they build a simple, systematic ladder of neural mass models showing how diverse formalisms connect arxiv.org/pdf/2512.10982

Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.

“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”

How do you grow a thousand-year-old tree without waiting a thousand years? As @interspecies.agency writes, ecologists are trying to build a kind of time machine, making younger trees acquire in decades the ecological richness that normally takes centuries. www.noemamag.com/how-to-build...

Can we engineer cognition in aneural systems? What are the challenges and implications? Can synthetic biology be used to interrogate basal cognition? Our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social explores these questions using models of minimal gene circuits. Available here pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

My student @jordiplam.bsky.social just received an invitation from what appears to be a predatory journal. The prose is remarkable: part delirious flattery, part Victorian novel, and entirely committed to ensuring that the only conceivable reply is “yes.”

This is a rather preposterous question.

The fact that we might not be able yet to define it should never prevent us from make progress. If that were the case, biology would not make sense (we don't know how to define life). But, as with life, consciousness exists. That is a trivial fact.

This is the entrance of one of the old buildings near my home in Barcelona. I can’t help thinking the architect might have been a fan of George Boole: just look at the pattern of zeros and ones in the columns. And the doors even remind me of a robot face… Low Kolmogorov complexity though.