Jaya Khullar | November 8th, 2024
Imagine an autumn evening in Italy — dusk blends together orange-pink hues from the setting sun which brightens the cobblestone alleys and reflects off the city windows. Oscillating across the sky in an undefinable shape, a starling murmuration garners attention.
Starlings are medium-sized, speckled birds that flock together in large groups called murmurations. What makes this phenomenon particularly interesting is not just its unique appearance but the fact that starling murmurations are an example of an emergent system.
Emergence is a scientific theory “characterized by a property of wholeness that is not contained in its generative rules.” In other words, emergence is when a collection of small, relatively simple things come together as a singular, intelligent form. This intelligent entity emerges with properties and behaviors that the less complex things did not have. Because emergence is only characterized by this vague idea, almost anything can be an emergent phenomenon.
Dr. John Wikswo, University Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, and Physics, is currently teaching a class to Vanderbilt College Scholars students about emergence and its cross-disciplinary nature.
“Emergence may be the most important natural phenomena that is not normally taught to STEM students — no single discipline owns it,” Wikswo said. “I try to get people to speak a common language and use analogies to understand physical phenomena because it is a more important skill to be able to integrate these parts than to be able to describe a single part.”
Despite the broad applications of emergence as a concept, there is little research on emergence as it applies to various processes. One such process in medical sciences is the gut-brain axis, a complex system in the human body that unites the gastrointestinal organs of the body to the body’s neural network.
As a result of the gut-brain axis, there is a direct relationship between a person’s mood and their gastrointestinal tract. For example, conditions like irritable bowel syndrome or colitis can be developed at any stage in life regardless of genetic makeup because of the impacts of stress. Even if you do not have a gastrointestinal disease, you may notice before a midterm or interview that your stomach is more upset than usual because of the anxiety you are feeling. A colloquial phrase often used to describe this is “butterflies in the stomach” (in the case of emergence, you may say starlings in the stomach)!
In short-term times of stress, the sickly symptoms tend to go away, but because of the connection between mood and gastrointestinal functions, long-term negative emotions can have a much more severe impact. Rubinstein et al. found that several studies indicate “stress can modulate microbiota compositions and reduce the [gut’s] richness and diversity.” These disruptions of the microbiome are referred to as dysbiosis, which can lead to conditions such as obesity, inflammatory bowel diseases, and neurological disorders.
Understanding how such a complex system arose in the human body — the steps that led to its emergence — is critical to understand how the system operates. If it is well-known how the gut-brain axis operates, knowledge on disorders like gastrointestinal cancers, inflammatory bowel diseases, and depression will also be better understood and thus more aptly treated. Emergence also leads to more holistic thinking in the medical field because it contends that organisms do not exist in vacuums — they influence and are influenced by what is around them.
“Much of STEM is ‘reductionist science,’ where the quest is to get to the very smallest individual piece — in biology, DNA,” Wikswo said. “Emergence is an integrative phenomenon that allows us to look at problems differently.”
Wikswo agrees that even an abstract, relatively unfamiliar concept of emergence has far-reaching significance.
“Emergence is the source of the diversity and beauty of our existence,” Wikswo said. “It is so central to our life and is an entirely magnificent aspect that is untaught because it happens to not be the subject of reductionist analysis.”
References
Carabotti, M., Scirocco, A., Maselli, M. A., & Severi, C. (2015). The gut-brain axis: interactions between enteric microbiota, central and enteric nervous systems. Annals of gastroenterology, 28(2), 203–209.
“Emergence – Latest Research and News | Nature.” Nature.com, Nature, 10 July 2024, www.nature.com/subjects/emergence. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.
Lozupone, C. A., Stombaugh, J. I., Gordon, J. I., Jansson, J. K., & Knight, R. (2012). Diversity, stability and resilience of the human gut microbiota. Nature, 489(7415), 220–230. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11550.
Mara Roxana Rubinstein, et al. “Current Understanding of the Roles of Gut–Brain Axis in the Cognitive Deficits Caused by Perinatal Stress Exposure.” Cells, vol. 12, no. 13, 28 June 2023, pp. 1735–1735, https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12131735.
Rothschild, Lynn J. “The Role of Emergence in Biology.” Oxford University Press EBooks, 15 May 2008, pp. 151–165, academic.oup.com/book/12769/chapter/162924464, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544318.003.0006. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.