Reafference and the origin of the self in early nervous system evolution
Open accessAbstract
Discussions of the function of early nervous systems usually focus on a causal flow from sensors to effectors, by which an animal coordinates its actions with exogenous changes in its environment. We propose, instead, that much early sensing was reafferent; it was responsive to the consequences of the animal's own actions. We distinguish two general categories of reafference—translocational and deformational—and use these to survey the distribution of several often-neglected forms of sensing, including gravity sensing, flow sensing and proprioception. We discuss sensing of these kinds in sponges, ctenophores, placozoans, cnidarians and bilaterians. Reafference is ubiquitous, as ongoing action, especially whole-body motility, will almost inevitably influence the senses. Corollary discharge—a pathway or circuit by which an animal tracks its own actions and their reafferent consequences—is not a necessary feature of reafferent sensing but a later-evolving mechanism. We also argue for the importance of reafferent sensing to the evolution of the body-self, a form of organization that enables an animal to sense and act as a single unit. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens’.
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Motile predators must be able to subtract their own motion from incoming sensory information to accurately track prey or conspecifics, via reafference.
“For example, motile predators must be able to subtract their own motion from incoming sensory information to accurately track prey or conspecifics, via a process known as reafference, which may have been one of the earliest functions of neuronal systems [15,33,34].”
From The social origins of consciousness (2025) · cites this paper as [33]
The Flow sensing section (page unavailable) describes filtering self-generated sensory signals to improve detection of external changes, including suppression by corollary discharge. It does not establish that motile predators must do this to track prey or conspecifics. The Abstract also distinguishes early reafferent sensing from corollary discharge, which it describes as a later-evolving mechanism. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEarly neural systems had a feedback loop used for reafference.
“It has been suggested that early neural systems had just such a feedback loop, which was used for reafference ([34]; reafference is also present in extant sponges and ctenophores, supporting its early origins [33]).”
From The social origins of consciousness (2025) · cites this paper as [33]
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- Authors
- Jékely, G., Godfrey-Smith, P., & Keijzer, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- 2 School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia
- University of Groningen (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Jékely, Gáspár
- Keijzer, Fred
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2021-02-08
- Volume
- 376
- Issue
- 1821
- Pages
- 20190764-20190764
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC7934971
- OpenAlex
- W3126220937
- Cited by
- 119
- References
- 133
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 2.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2018-392)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Marine Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- reafference, body self, proprioception, gravity sensing, flow sensing, corollary discharge, ctenophores, placozoans, Cnidaria, bilaterians, basal cognition
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cnidaria, Efferent Pathways, Nervous System, Nervous System Physiological Phenomena, Porifera, Proprioception, Ctenophora, Placozoa
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
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