The Body as an Information System

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Biology is often described in material terms: hormones circulate through the body, blood glucose rises and falls, muscles contract, neurons fire.

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All of this is accurate. Yet these descriptions, while useful, leave an important question unanswered:

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What organizes these processes?

Why is a hormone released at one moment and not another?
Why does inflammation increase in one context and resolve in another?
Why does the same physiological event produce different outcomes in different individuals?

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The answer is not found in molecules alone. Biological processes do not unfold randomly. They unfold in response to information.

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The human organism can be understood not only as a biochemical system, but as an information-processing and information-organizing system whose primary function is regulation. From this perspective, physiology is not merely a collection of mechanisms. It is a continuously adapting network that detects signals, interprets their significance, anticipates future demands, allocates resources, and updates itself through experience.

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Biochemistry remains essential. Yet it can also be understood as the medium through which information is communicated and acted upon.

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Detection Precedes Action

 

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Every physiological response begins with detection. Specialized receptors continuously monitor both the external environment and the internal state of the organism.

 

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These signals include, for example:

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• Blood glucose levels

• Oxygen concentration

• Mechanical stretch

• Temperature changes

• Inflammatory mediators

• Nutrient availability

• Social cues

• Internal visceral states

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At every moment, vast amounts of information flow through neural, endocrine, and immune pathways. The organism is not passively observing these signals. It is actively evaluating them. Baroreceptors influence autonomic tone through brainstem integration. Immune cells communicate with the nervous system through cytokine signalling. Insulin secretion is shaped not only by glucose concentration but also by sensory cues, expectation, and context. Even before food enters the bloodstream, the body may begin preparing for digestion and nutrient handling. This principle appears throughout physiology. Detection precedes action. Information precedes regulation. Before metabolism changes, information changes.

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Prediction Rather Than Reaction

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Traditionally, physiology has often been understood as reactive: a stimulus-response type of machinery in which something happens, and the body simply reacts. Contemporary neuroscience, however, increasingly suggests a different picture.

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According to predictive processing models, the nervous system continuously generates predictions about both the external world and the internal state of the body. Incoming signals are compared against these predictions. When reality differs from what was expected, prediction errors emerge. These discrepancies drive learning, adaptation, and the updating of regulation.

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Within this framework, the organism does not merely respond to what is happening. It continuously attempts to anticipate what will happen next. This can be observed through measurable physiological consequences. For example, anticipatory stress can elevate cortisol before an event actually occurs. Placebo responses can activate the body’s own opioid and dopamine systems before any pharmacological effect has taken place. Expectations influence pain perception, immune activity, and autonomic regulation. Perceived controllability can shape inflammatory signalling. Perceived safety can influence how the organism allocates energy and other resources. There are countless examples. The organism does not respond only to reality. It responds to its best current model of reality.

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Information and Meaning

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Not all information is biologically equivalent.

 

A signal becomes biologically important only when it carries meaning for the organism.

 

Consider an elevated heart rate.

The physiological event may be nearly identical whether it occurs:

 

• During exercise

• Before a public speech

• During a joyful reunion

• During a perceived threat

 

The cardiovascular response may overlap. The meaning assigned to the experience does not.

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This distinction matters because biological systems do not respond solely to physical stimuli. They respond to the interpreted significance of those stimuli. Modern research on appraisal, emotion, and interoception increasingly suggests that physiological regulation depends not only on sensory input but also on how that input is categorized and understood by the system. The same situation may be experienced as a challenge or a danger, an opportunity or a threat, safety or uncertainty. Different interpretations can lead to different physiological responses, even when the external circumstances are nearly identical.

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Meaning is not separate from biology. Meaning is one of the mechanisms through which biology organizes itself.

 

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The Body Does Not even try to Seek Stillness

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Health is often imagined as balance: a stable body, a stable heart rate, a stable hormonal profile. Yet living systems rarely remain fixed in place or in a state of continuous equilibrium. A healthy heart does not beat with mechanical regularity. Healthy physiology moves and fluctuates according to context. Blood pressure varies. Blood glucose varies. Hormonal levels change across different situations. Immune activity is in a constant state of movement, as is healthy body temperature.

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Good adaptive capacity requires continuous movement. Modern physiology increasingly describes this process through the concept of allostasis. Rather than maintaining stability through sameness, the organism achieves stability through change. The body continuously adjusts itself as it anticipates future demands.

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A healthy system is not one that remains unchanged. A healthy system is one that can change appropriately. This distinction has profound implications, because health is not merely balance. Health is the capacity for flexible adaptation.

 

 

Information Directs Energy in body

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Every living organism faces a fundamental challenge: Energy is limited, and resources must be allocated appropriately.

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At any given moment, the body must decide how much energy to invest in:

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• Growth

• Repair

• Reproduction

• Learning

• Exploration

• Immune defence

• Immediate survival

 

These decisions are guided by information.

 

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When the organism predicts safety and sufficient resources, energy can be directed toward long-term investments. This allows growth, strengthens repair processes, expands learning capacity, and supports the normalization of reproductive functions.

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When the organism predicts danger, scarcity, or instability, priorities shift. Resources are redirected toward immediate survival. Stress systems become activated. Inflammatory processes may intensify. Energy reserves are mobilized. Long-term maintenance becomes secondary. This does not necessarily indicate dysfunction. It may represent adaptive prioritization. The body is constantly making biological economic decisions, and information determines how these decisions are made.

From this perspective, physiology can be understood as a continuous process of resource budgeting, guided by the ongoing assessment of both environmental conditions and the internal state of the organism.

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Regulation as Information Flow

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Many physiological systems traditionally studied in isolation are, in reality, deeply interconnected. The autonomic nervous system continuously evaluates safety, demand, and uncertainty. The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis coordinates stress adaptation and energy allocation. The immune system monitors both biological and environmental conditions. Metabolic systems adjust nutrient use and storage. These systems continuously exchange information with one another. Signals generated in one domain influence activity in another. This may appear, for example, as immune activation altering nervous system function, while nervous system activity also influences the immune system. Hormonal signals reshape metabolism, and metabolic state influences cognition and behaviour.

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The body is not a collection of separate mechanisms. It is a network of communicating processes. Understanding health therefore requires understanding flows of information and the relationships between them, not merely examining isolated variables.

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Experience as an Essential Part of Biological Information

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Experience is often viewed as something separate from physiology, as a kind of movement within the mind. A subjective experience that happens alongside biological processes, but somewhat apart from them. Yet experience itself may be an extremely important part of biological regulation, perhaps even one of its most important aspects.

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Hunger is not merely low energy availability. It is also the conscious experience of a regulatory signal. Pain is not merely tissue damage. It is the experience through which protective priorities become available to awareness. Fatigue is not only an energy deficit. It is a coordinated signal that influences behaviour. Emotions may function in a similar way. They are not merely psychological events. Emotions may represent integrated summaries of multiple physiological processes.

Signals originating from different parts of the body are continuously communicated to the brain through interoceptive pathways.

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These signals influence, for example:

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• Mood

• Motivation

• Behavioural tendencies

• Bodily awareness

• Decision-making

 

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From this perspective, conscious experience may function as an interface through which regulatory information becomes available to the organism.

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This leads to an interesting perspective: the boundary between mind and body begins to appear less clear. Experience is not necessarily separate from regulation. It may be one expression of regulation. The mind does not simply affect the body, and the body does not simply affect the mind. Rather, they are part of a unified regulatory system.

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Biology as an Archive of Experience

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Information does not simply pass through biological systems. It leaves traces. Living systems carry their histories. The immune system remembers prior exposures. Neural networks reflect prior learning. Muscles adapt to previous demands. Connective tissues remodel in response to repeated loads. Patterns of gene expression can be shaped by previous environmental conditions.

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Throughout the organism, past experiences become part of present structure. Biology therefore contains memory at multiple levels. This does not refer only to cognitive memory, but also to regulatory memory: physiological and structural memory. This perspective helps explain why organisms do not encounter the world as blank slates. Current responses are shaped by accumulated history. The organism does not respond only to present circumstances. It responds through the lens of what previous experience has taught it to expect.

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When Information Becomes Physical Structure

 

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As long as predictive models remain flexible, regulation can adapt efficiently. When predictive patterns become rigid, physiology may begin to stabilize around biased assumptions. This process is not inherently pathological. In most cases, it is adaptive.

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However, adaptations that are useful in one context may become burdensome when they persist for too long.

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Prolonged anticipatory stress may, for example:

 

 

• Alter cortisol rhythms

• Influence metabolic regulation

• Increase baseline inflammatory activity

• Reduce autonomic flexibility

• Shift behavioural priorities

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Over time, repeated patterns begin to root themselves more deeply within biological organization. Information becomes more stable structure, and structure becomes the baseline for bodily functions. Baseline becomes identity. This means that the organism begins to operate according to assumptions that have become biologically instantiated.

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This is not metaphorical. It is concrete. It reflects the tendency of complex adaptive systems to stabilize around repeated patterns.

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Beyond Molecular Reduction

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Understanding the body as an information system does not mean rejecting molecular biology. It means understanding cellular physiology from a broader functional perspective. Hormones are molecules, but they are also signals. Cytokines are molecules, but they are also messengers. Neural activation patterns are physical events, but they also encode information. Biochemical understanding remains indispensable. Yet biochemical events gain much of their meaning from their role within broader regulatory networks.

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The question is not whether molecules matter. The question is how molecules participate in organized information flow. From this perspective, biological structure can be understood as stabilized informational organization expressed through physical processes.

 

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Toward an Informational Understanding of Health

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Health is more than the optimization of isolated variables. Health reflects how well different systems integrate with one another. A healthy organism is not necessarily one that maximizes any single biomarker. Rather, it is one that preserves its capacity for flexible adaptation while coordinating information effectively across multiple levels of organization. When information flow becomes fragmented, physiology begins to compensate. When information flow is coherent and integrated, adaptive capacity expands. This perspective does not reduce health to mindset or mental state. Nor does it deny the importance of genetics, nutrition, pathogens, or the physical environment. Instead, it suggests that all these factors influence the organism through regulatory systems that continuously interpret, integrate, and make use of information. The organism does not operate on fuel alone. It operates on interpreted signals.

 

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Perhaps the most important insight and implication of this perspective is that biology is not merely a collection of substances and mechanisms. Biology may be better understood as an ongoing process of organization. A living system continuously detects, anticipates, allocates, remembers, and adapts. Physiology can therefore be seen not only as chemistry in motion, but also as a process through which information becomes structure over time. And health may ultimately reflect the capacity of that structure to remain sufficiently flexible to learn, adapt, and reorganize as circumstances change.

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The Limits of the Mechanistic Model

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The mechanistic approach in medicine has been extraordinarily successful. It has allowed us to identify hormones, neurotransmitters, immune signalling pathways, genes, and countless other physiological mechanisms. Yet identifying mechanisms alone does not fully explain organization. A list of components does not yet tell us why those components work together in the particular ways they do. Even if we knew every molecule involved in a conversation, we would still not understand the meaning of the conversation. In the same way, identifying individual physiological signals does not automatically explain how the organism maintains functional coherence across multiple systems simultaneously. This does not mean that some unknown force operates behind biology. It does, however, highlight a challenge that appears again and again in the study of complex systems. The behaviour of the whole cannot always be understood by examining its parts in isolation.

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Biology appears to organize itself across multiple levels at once:

 

Genes influence cells.

Cells influence tissues.

Tissues influence organs.

Organs influence behaviour.

Behaviour reshapes physiology.

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Each level both constrains and guides the others. The organism is not merely a machine assembled from parts. It is a continuously self-organizing process. Understanding this process may require more than identifying individual mechanisms. It may require understanding how information becomes organized across different levels of biological reality.

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Information Without an Observer?

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If biology is fundamentally organized around information, an important question emerges:

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What exactly is information?

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In everyday language, information often implies a message being received by someone. A sentence contains information because it is interpreted by a reader. A signal contains information because it is interpreted by a receiver. Yet biological systems appear to process information continuously without a conscious observer. Immune cells recognize molecular patterns. Endocrine systems respond to environmental changes. Neural networks update their predictions automatically. Information appears to exist long before it reaches conscious experience.

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This raises a deeper question:

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Is information an intrinsic feature of living systems? Or does information only emerge when signals acquire meaning within a regulatory context?

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Modern biology does not provide a complete answer.

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What is clear is that information cannot be reduced solely to physical structure. The same signal may carry different significance under different conditions. Meaning depends not only on the signal itself, but on the system interpreting it.

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From this perspective, information may be understood less as a thing and more as a relationship. A relationship between a signal and the organism that must decide what that signal means.

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Why Subjective Conscious Experience May Matter Deeply

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Conscious experience remains one of the most difficult questions in science. Physiology can describe neural activity with increasing precision. Yet the relationship between neural activity and subjective experience remains only partially understood. Why should electrical and chemical activity be accompanied by felt experience at all? There is currently no scientific consensus. Some theories propose that experience emerges from sufficiently complex information processing. Others suggest that consciousness may be a more fundamental feature of reality than traditionally assumed.

 

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Regardless of which explanation ultimately proves correct, one important observation remains: Experience appears closely linked to regulation. Pain, hunger, fatigue, fear, and curiosity are very different phenomena, but they all influence behaviour.  Experience does not merely accompany physiological processes. It participates in them. Subjective states help guide action, and action in turn reshapes physiology. Physiology shapes future experience. The relationship is not linear but circular. It is possible that experience is not an accidental by-product of biological activity. It is possible that it forms part of the interface through which a living system navigates itself and its environment.

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This idea remains speculative, but it highlights an important observation:

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the more deeply biology is studied, the more difficult it becomes to separate information, regulation, behaviour, and experience into fully independent phenomena.

 

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From Information Processing Toward a Broader View

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The language of information processing is useful because it helps explain prediction, regulation, adaptation, and communication between biological systems in an understandable way. Yet living systems do more than merely process information. They continuously organize and reorganize that information.

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A computer processes information. A living organism processes information while simultaneously rebuilding itself. Cells are replaced. Neural connections are modified and new ones are formed. Predictions are updated. Memories are stored. Structures are reorganized. As a result, identity itself also changes over time. The organism is therefore not an unchanging entity that merely processes inputs mechanically. It is an ongoing process that reorganizes itself in response to what it encounters.

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From this perspective, life can be seen not only as matter in motion and information processing, but also as a process through which information becomes organized into biological form. The body does not merely contain information.

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The body is, in part, what information becomes when it stabilizes over time. Repeated perceptions, predictions, behavioural patterns, and physiological responses gradually become established as part of biological structure.

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You may have heard ideas such as:

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"The body is spirit made manifest."

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"Matter is condensed consciousness."

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Or:

"Experience becomes body."

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We may not know what spirit ultimately means, or whether such concepts can be defined scientifically at all. What we do know is that biological structure carries information about past experience, learning, environmental conditions, and regulatory history. Persistent information flows leave traces in structure. Over time, structure begins to reflect the information that shaped it.

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From this perspective, the body can be understood, at least in part, as the visible, embodied form of history, information, and adaptation.

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Further Reading

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For readers interested in scientific foundations related to this perspective:

 

• Predictive processing models in neuroscience

• Research on interoception and insular cortex function

• Psychoneuroimmunology and stress–immune interaction

• Heart rate variability and autonomic flexibility research

• Allostatic load and long-term regulatory burden

• Placebo and nocebo neurobiology (endogenous opioid and dopamine systems)

• Complexity theory in adaptive biological systems

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These fields of research do not provide a single unified explanation. Rather, they offer complementary perspectives on how regulation, anticipation, and the organization of information become expressed through biological processes.

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Written by Natassa Aaltonen