Dimensions of Consciousness in Organisms.
Sibin Mathew Nesin, Chris Percy, František Baluška, Predrag Slijepcevic, William B Miller
Bio Systems November 3, 2026 DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2026.105999 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Bioelectromagnetic fields Cognition Consciousness Evolution N-space episenome |
| Key points | Argues that consciousness is not confined to neural systems or complex brains but is a broadly distributed, multidimensional phenomenon across living systems. Proposes six interdependent dimensions—state, awareness, memory, attention, perception, and action—unified through the cellular senome and, in multicellular organisms, the N-space Episenome, and contends that evolution elaborates these fundamental dimensions rather than producing entirely new conscious faculties. |
Abstract
Consciousness research has traditionally focused on neural systems and has often treated consciousness as a late evolutionary innovation associated with complex brains. However, accumulating evidence from unicellular organisms, plants, and diverse animal taxa suggests that cognition and consciousness may be more broadly distributed across life. We propose a multidimensional framework of consciousness grounded in the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory and the concepts of the cellular senome and the multicellular N-space Episenome. Six universal dimensions of consciousness are identified and examined across biological scales: state, awareness, memory, attention, perception, and action. We argue that these dimensions are not independent faculties but interdependent manifestations of a unified informational architecture. The senome, conceived as the totality of a cell's sensory experiences and bioelectrical interactions, continuously integrates internal and external information to maintain self-referential awareness and adaptive competence. In multicellular organisms, overlapping individual cellular senomes form a supracellular N-space episenome, a collective informational space-time matrix that coordinates organism-wide cognition and behavior to effect seamless holobionts. Within this framework, organismal consciousness is localized not only to nervous systems but represents the collective cellular interactions of organism-wide informational systems that sense, remember, attend, perceive, and act in manner allowing survival and evolution. In this senomically-based consciousness framework, evolution is viewed as the progressive elaboration of these fundamental dimensions rather than the origin of entirely novel conscious faculties. This multidimensional perspective provides a unified conceptual framework for investigating consciousness across all living systems and offers new directions for empirical and theoretical research into the origins, mechanisms, and evolutionary trajectory of conscious experience.