We investigate the in
uence that the
ow of information in membrane systems
has on their computational complexity. In particular, we analyse the behaviour of P systems
with active membranes where communication only happens from a membrane towards
its parent, and never in the opposite direction. We prove that these \monodirectional
P systems" are, when working in polynomial time and under standard complexity-theoretic
assumptions, much less powerful than unrestricted ones: indeed, they characterise classes
of problems de ned by polynomial-time Turing machines with NP oracles, rather than
the whole class PSPACE of problems solvable in polynomial space
