The InfoBioMatrix Concept: Information Dynamics in a Living System

The InfoBioMatrix concept presents a theoretical model of the informational organization of a living system, in which mental activity is regarded as a natural development of the mechanisms of biological regulation and the organism’s interaction with its environment. The model is based on two functionally distinct information streams: an internal information stream reflecting the state of the organism, and an external information stream containing information about the properties and objects of the environment. The hierarchical organization of the internal information stream leads to the integration of information about the organism’s state and, at the highest level of integration of the internal information stream, to the formation of a motivational state reflecting the organism’s current need. The resulting motivation determines an informational request directed toward the external information stream: the organism must identify within its environment a factor capable of compensating for the emerging deficit or satisfying the current need. Within the concept, perception is understood as an active process of searching for and recognizing objects and properties of the environment according to their current biological significance for the organism. The multitude of available external factors is continuously matched against the current internal informational request, giving the informational representation of the external world a dynamic character that changes with the organism’s motivational state. In parallel with the process of perception, memory is formed as a stable memory trace linking a particular motivational state to an external factor corresponding to it in terms of biological significance. The recurrence of a similar motivation allows previously established informational trajectories to be used, thereby shortening the search for the required external factor. The accumulation and organization of such associations create individual experience and form the basis of adaptive behavior. Thus, within the InfoBioMatrix concept, motivation, perception, memory, and adaptive behavior are regarded as sequential and interconnected manifestations of a unified informational process: the internal state of the organism generates a motivational informational request, perception enables the search for the corresponding factor in the environment, and memory preserves the identified correspondence for subsequent use. The InfoBioMatrix concept is proposed as a theoretical hypothesis whose mechanisms require experimental verification.