Consciousness emerges from temporal integration across biological scales: from cellular memory to phenomenological experience

Abstract

Consciousness remains one of the central challenges in contemporary neuroscience, in part due to the absence of an explicit framework describing the temporal constraints required for integrative processing. While influential models such as Integrated Information Theory and the Free Energy Principle characterize structural and functional aspects of conscious systems, they remain largely agnostic regarding the minimum temporal windows necessary for information to become phenomenologically accessible. We propose that temporal integration constitutes a biologically invariant constraint operating across multiple organizational scales. Drawing on recent experimental evidence of memory formation in non-neuronal cells, we introduce the concept of a minimal bioelectrical/biochemical temporal window (ΔT_b) governing cellular information consolidation. We propose that this foundational temporal constraint may contribute to organismic basal coherence (γ) through bioelectric and autonomic mechanisms, which in turn modulate higher-order perceptual and phenomenological integration. Within the Emergent Flow Theory framework, classical findings from the Libet paradigm are reinterpreted not as evidence against agency, but as reflecting necessary delays associated with multilevel temporal integration. By linking cellular memory, bioelectric signaling, vagal-autonomic regulation, and cortical dynamics, this work outlines a unified temporal architecture of conscious processing that is biologically grounded, mechanistically plausible, and empirically testable using multimodal neurophysiological protocols. The proposed pathway linking cellular temporal integration (ΔT_b) to organismic autonomic coherence (γ) is classified as mechanistically plausible, requiring empirical validation within the EFT framework.