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Cognition in invertebrates

Cognition can be viewed as the integrating process that utilizes both phylogenetic and physiological memory, creates an internal representation of the world and a basis for expecting the future of the animal’s own actions within the experienced environment. It thus allows the animal to decide between different options in reference to the expected outcome of its potential actions. All these processes occur as intrinsic properties of the nervous system and provide an implicit form of knowledge for controlling behavior. None of these processes need to – and certainly will not – become explicit within the nervous systems of most invertebrates, but, as this review will show, such processes must be assumed to also exist in invertebrates with proper nervous systems (albeit over a large range of levels of complexity) to account for their behavior.