feijão
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Hi there!
I'd be interested in working on some of these papers with you. I'm currently training as a Clinical Psychotherapist at King's College London and am keen on exploring the intersection between AI and therapy.
Feel free to either message me here or email me at k2478540@kcl.ac.uk
The studies I linked above started measuring 2-10 minutes after stunning, but there are other studies which have measured CNS activity before, during, and immediately after the stunning process - for example, Fregin & Bickmeyer (2016). Interestingly, they observed that before settling into a quiescent state, intense epileptic-form seizures occur in the CNS that last for up to an hour after stunning. In mammals, epileptic-form seizures are associated with a loss of consciousness and a lack of subjective experience during that period, suggesting insensibility (and this is roughly how the authors interpret their finding). However, more work needs to be done to better understand this phenomenon in decapod crustaceans.
I'm not focussing on the asphyxiation process, so I'll let someone with more knowledge in that area chime in. If no one does, I'd be happy to look into it!
If the central nervous system has truly stopped functioning, that would imply insensibility. That’s why loss of all measurable brain activity is taken as a sign of unconsciousness in clinical contexts. In humans, episodes with reduced CNS activity (for example, during deep anaesthesia or certain brain injuries) are generally associated with a lack of subjective experience.
For decapods, the challenge is that most studies measure spontaneous CNS activity rather than testing every possible form of responsiveness, such as testing to see whether we can evoke CNS responses through stimulation. So while prolonged inactivity is a strong sign of insensibility, researchers should still gather more data to increase confidence (especially given that, as you mention, we are putting a lot of resources behind this!)
I’m actually in the middle of a literature review on this exact topic - electrical stunning in decapod crustaceans. There’s reasonable evidence from several species (e.g., Carcinus maenas (crabs), Homarus gammarus (lobsters), Nephrops norvegicus (lobsters), Paranephrops zealandicus (crayfish)) that correctly applied electrical stunning can abolish neural activity for several hours, which is generally taken to indicate insensibility (Neil et al., 2024; Neil et al., 2022; Albalat et al., 2022).
There are no published studies directly measuring neural responsiveness in shrimp after stunning. However, post-stun behavioural quiescence in shrimp looks very similar to the behaviours seen in those other species where neural shutdown has been demonstrated. This is why it’s generally inferred that the method would work for shrimp as well, though experimental validation is still needed and mapping out how to achieve that will be one of the aims of my review.
These are all really important questions, and its great that you want to engage in discussion about it!
Have you looked at the Moral Weight Project? It's a great piece of work that tries to tackle the (very complex, as you state) issue of comparing the welfare of different species, including humans. All their assumptions are explicitly listed, so you can look through and see where you disagree. There is a great sequence about it on the forum here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/y5n47MfgrKvTLE3pw
And I also wrote a couple of more accessible explainers of the project here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16EdSGP1-xs0Mh4G6QfQYOaaYfduDEpp32NK5BBlznYE/edit?tab=t.0
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SIurNLZB8hSXTCKUNmREHmBt2sP4IQ4R0XkdYAZbYp0/edit?tab=t.0
The idea of fungi evolving to infect humans and resulting in apocalypse underpins the premise of the famous game and TV series "The Last of Us"
Given the series' critical acclaim and popularity, I wonder if it also demonstrates potential for engaging the public with this topic through mainstream popular media.