It is curious that in order to understand how our brain works, long considered special and superior to those of other animals, one must observe a creature as small and as distant from us as a bee. Yet that is precisely what a group of researchers did when they published the study Psychophysical Laws and the Superorganism in Scientific Reports. The Anglo-Italian research, conducted by researchers from the University of Sheffield and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (Istc) of the National Research Council (Cnr), has in fact discovered, through a mathematical model, that bees (Apis mellifera) respond in unison to environmental stimuli, just as our brain neurons do.

How a superorganism works

The researchers used a mathematical model of swarming that identified correspondences with the neural mechanisms underlying cognition, and which could therefore help shed light on the mechanisms behind human behaviour. "A swarm of bees can be considered a superorganism made up of thousands of insects that respond in unison to external stimuli – explained Vito Trianni, a researcher at Istc-Cnr and co-author of the study – just as the neurons of the brain react to stimuli coming from the environment."

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All for one, one for all

By "superorganism" is meant, according to the definition of Wilson and Sober, "a collection of individual organisms that, when grouped together, possess the functional organisation implicit in the formal definition of an organism." In practice, the bee colony behaves and thinks as a single living being. In this case, unity truly is strength: it is remarkable, for example, that the cognitive and learning capacity of a hive surpasses that of more evolved organisms such as certain vertebrates. "Bees collectively decide where to build their hive, and to achieve this goal they make use of complex signals that allow them to attract other bees towards high-quality nesting sites or to inhibit recruitment for lower-quality alternatives – the Istc-Cnr researcher revealed. – These signals are similar to those transmitted between populations of neurons during decision-making processes involving multiple alternatives."

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Bees as neurons

The authors of the study believe that the analogy between bees and the neurons of the human brain could make it possible "to draw precise correspondences between the interactions among bees responsible for the behaviour of the superorganism and the neural mechanisms underlying cognition, and therefore to identify the micro-interactions at the root of the general mechanisms of human behaviour and beyond," Trianni stated.

The laws of psychophysics

The research demonstrated that even in superorganisms it is possible to identify decision-making processes that comply with the laws of psychophysics, just as occurs in all organisms. Psychophysics, introduced in the nineteenth century, is a branch of psychology that studies the relationship between the intensity of a stimulus and its perception in the human brain. "Through theoretical analysis – the study reads – we show how a superorganism can respond to variations in the stimulus according to the psychophysical laws observed in humans and other animals." The research can therefore facilitate an understanding of neural dynamics and confirms that we still have much to learn about ourselves and the phenomena that govern our behaviour, even from insects.