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Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware or may be acutely aware of an event. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience.

Electro-chemical networks related to the chordate nervous system facilitate awareness. Researchers have debated what minimal components are necessary for animals to be aware of environmental stimulus, though all animals have some capacity for acute reactive behavior that implies a faculty for awareness.

Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awareness. Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks.

Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attentuate awareness among complex animals whose centralThe human central nervous system consists of the brain and spinal cord. These lie in the midline of the body and are associated with the skull and vertebrae respectively. see Nervous System) The central nervous system along with the peripheral nervous sys and peripheral nervous systemThe peripheral nervous system or PNS is part of the nervous system, and consists of the nerves and neurons that reside or extend outside the central nervous system--to serve the limbs and organs, for example. The peripheral nervous system is further divid provides more information than cognitiveThe term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. In psychology it is used to refer to the mental processes of an individual, with particular relation to a view that argues that the mind has internal mental states (such as beliefs, des areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mindContrast with soul'. The mind is a subject about which very much theorizing, experimenting, and expostulating has occurred in philosophy (studied under the heading philosophy of mind), psychology, and religion (where, in theology, it is often considered a might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousnessThe concept of extended consciousness was theorized and popularized by a neurology department chairman from University of Iowa College of Medicine, Antonio Damasio..