A leech (Hirudinea) has 32 brains throughout its segmented body. An Octopus (Octopoda) has 9 brains, one for its head and 8 for its arms (legs?).
How do these animals process tasks using multiple brains? It would suck if 3 out of your 8 arms wanted to go find a place to hide while your brain and other 5 arms are actively hunting.
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Humans do experience a couple of things that are analogous; even as centralized as we are, not all choices our bodies make are routed through the brain. The instinct to jerk your hand away from a burn, or to kick your foot when your knee is tapped, both get the greenlight signal from the spinal cord. Your conscious brain has no control over what you do in the milliseconds between that signal hitting the spinal cord and your brain processing.
It’s hard to say what any animal experiences for certain. Something like a leech almost certainly doesn’t have much higher stream of thoughts separate from its instinct, so may as well localize the neurons. Octopi are more intelligent; most research suggests that they use the neuron clusters in their arms to improve muscle memory and reflexes, rather than independent learning or decision-making which is in the central brain.
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