♦  Aleksander I. Machine consciousness. Prog Brain Res. 2005;150:99-108. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50008-6. PMID: 16186018.     

The work from several laboratories on the modeling of consciousness is reviewed. This ranges, on one hand, from purely functional models where behavior is important and leads to an attribution of consciousness to, on the other hand, material work closely derived from … [read more]

♦  Almeida VN. The neural hierarchy of consciousness: A theoretical model and review on neurophysiology and NCCs. Neuropsychologia. 2022 May 3;169:108202. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108202. Epub 2022 Mar 8. PMID: 35271856.

The chief undertaking in the studies of consciousness is that of unravelling the neural correlates of consciousness. To this day, this crusade remains at an impasse, with a clash of two main theoretical stances: the Global Neuronal Workspace and the … [read more]

♦  Arrabales R, Ledezma A, Sanchis A. Simulating visual qualia in the CERA-CRANIUM cognitive architecture. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2011;718:223-  38. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-0164-3_18. PMID: 21744222.

The concept of qualia poses a central problem in the framework of consciousness studies. Despite it being a controversial issue even in the study of human consciousness, we argue that qualia can be complementarily studied using artificial cognitive architectures … [read more] 

♦  Arthuis M, Valton L, Régis J, Chauvel P, Wendling F, Naccache L, Bernard C, Bartolomei F. Impaired consciousness during temporal lobe seizures is related to increased long-distance cortical-subcortical synchronization. Brain. 2009, Aug;132 (Pt 8):2091-101. doi: 10.1093/brain/awp086. Epub 2009 May 4. PMID: 19416952.

Loss of consciousness (LOC) is a dramatic clinical manifestation of temporal lobe seizures. Its underlying mechanism could involve altered coordinated neuronal activity between the brain regions that support conscious information processing. The consciousness access … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ. How does a serial, integrated and very limited stream of consciousness emerge from a nervous system that is mostly unconscious, distributed, parallel and of enormous capacity? Ciba Found Symp. 1993;174:282-90; discussion 291-303. doi: 10.1002/9780470514412.ch14. PMID: 8319511.

Global Workspace theory is consistent with, but not reducible to, other theories of limited-capacity mechanisms. Global workspace architectures must show competition for input to a neural global workspace and global distribution of … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ. The conscious access hypothesis: origins and recent evidence. Trends Cogn Sci. 2002 Jan 1;6(1):47-52. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01819-2. PMID: 11849615.

Consciousness might help to mobilize and integrate brain functions that are otherwise separate and independent. Evidence for this ‘conscious access hypothesis’ was described almost two decades ago, in a framework called global workspace theory. The theory had … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ, Franklin S. How conscious experience and working memory interact. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 Apr;7(4):166-172. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(03)00056-1. PMID: 12691765.

Active components of classical working memory are conscious, but traditional theory does not account for this fact. Global Workspace theory suggests that consciousness is needed to recruit unconscious specialized networks that carry out detailed working memory … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ. Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience. Prog Brain Res. 2005;150:45-53. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50004-9.  PMID: 16186014.

Global workspace (GW) theory emerged from the cognitive architecture tradition in cognitive science. Frontoparietal hypometabolism is also implicated in unconscious states, including deep sleep, coma, vegetative states, epileptic loss of consciousness, and … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ, Franklin S. An architectural model of conscious and unconscious brain functions: Global Workspace Theory and IDA. Neural Netw. 2007, Nov; 20(9):955-61. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2007.09.013. Epub 2007 Sep 18. PMID: 17998071.

Empirically, this cognitive architecture accounts qualitatively for the data described by Baars’ Global Workspace Theory (GWT), and Franklin’s LIDA architecture, including state-of-the-art models of conscious contents in action-planning, Baddeley-style Working … [read more] 

♦  Baars BJ. Spontaneous repetitive thoughts can be adaptive: postscript on “mind wandering”. Psychol Bull. 2010 Mar;136(2):208-210. doi: 10.1037/a0018726. PMID: 20192560.

This view of the spontaneous stream is consistent with the perspective of global workspace theory on conscious contents, which suggests that conscious events are not like unconscious cognitive representations. Rather, conscious events trigger widespread adaptive … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ, Franklin S, Ramsoy TZ. Global workspace dynamics: cortical “binding and propagation” enables conscious contents. Front Psychol. 2013 May 28;4:200. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00200. PMID: 23974723; PMCID: PMC3664777.

A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub of binding and propagation in a population of loosely coupled signaling elements. Conscious moments are thought to hold only 1-4 unrelated items; this small focal capacity may be the biological price to pay for global … [read more]

♦  Baars BJ. A scientific approach to silent consciousness. Front Psychol. 2013 Oct 10;4:678. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00678. PMID: 24124418; PMCID: PMC3794454.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00678

♦  Baars BJ. Multiple sources of conscious odor integration and propagation in olfactory cortex. Front Psychol. 2013 Dec 20;4:930. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00930. PMID: 24391607; PMCID: PMC3868888.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00930

♦  Baars BJ. The Hard Problem is Mainly Hard Work. Cogn Neurosci. 2021 Jan-Jan;12(2):63-64. doi: 10.1080/17588928.2020.1838474. Epub 2020 Nov 26. PMID: 33242294.

Doerig et al. point out that there is now a great deal of evidence bearing directly on our understanding of consciousness. However, they argue that the multiplicity of theories suggest that we have a ‘lack of stringent criteria specifying how empirical data constrains ToCs … [read more]

♦  Bartolomei F, Naccache L. The global workspace (GW) theory of consciousness and epilepsy. Behav Neurol. 2011;24(1):67-74. doi: 10.3233/BEN-2011-0313. PMID: 21447900; PMCID: PMC5377983. 

The global workspace (GW) theory proposes that conscious processing results from coherent neuronal activity between widely distributed brain regions, with fronto-parietal associative cortices as key elements. Seizures are often characterized by the occurrence of … [read more]

♦  Bartolomei F, McGonigal A, Naccache L. Alteration of consciousness in focal epilepsy: the global workspace alteration theory. Epilepsy Behav. 2014 Jan;30:17-23. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2013.09.012. Epub 2013 Oct 6. PMID: 24103816.

Alteration of consciousness (AOC) is an important clinical manifestation of partial seizures that greatly impacts the quality of life of patients with epilepsy. Several theories have been proposed in the last fifty years. An emerging concept in neurology is the global … [read more]

♦  Bartolomei F. Coherent neural activity and brain synchronization during seizure-induced loss of consciousness. Arch Ital Biol. 2012 Jun-Sep;150(2-3):164-71. doi: 10.4449/aib.v150i2.1252. PMID: 23165876.

Epileptic seizures are often characterized by profound alteration of consciousness (AOC). This is particularly frequent in temporal lobe seizures (TLS), a subgroup of seizures originating in the temporal (and usually mesial temporal) brain areas. Recent investigations … [read more]

♦  Baudot P. Elements of qualitative cognition: An information topology perspective. Phys Life Rev. 2019 Dec; 31:263-275. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2019.10.003. Epub 2019 Oct 25. PMID: 31679788.

The electrodynamic intrinsic nature of consciousness, sustained by an analogical code, is illustrated by standard neuroscience and psychophysic results. Information topology provides a synthesis of the main models of consciousness (Neural Assemblies, Integrated I … [read more]

♦  Bayne T, Carter O. Dimensions of consciousness and the psychedelic state. Neurosci Conscious. 2018 Sep 19;2018(1):niy008. doi: 10.1093/nc/niy008. PMID: 30254752; PMCID: PMC6146157. 

Psychedelic-induced states of consciousness are indeed remarkable in many ways, but it is inappropriate to regard them as ‘higher’ states of consciousness. The final section of the article considers the implications of this analysis for two prominent theories of … [read more] 

♦  Bellet J, Gay M, Dwarakanath A, Jarraya B, van Kerkoerle T, Dehaene S, Panagiotaropoulos TI. Decoding rapidly presented visual stimuli from prefrontal ensembles without report nor post-perceptual processing. Neurosci Conscious. 2022 Feb 24;2022(1):niac005. doi: 10.1093/nc/niac005. PMID: 35223085; PMCID: PMC8868130.

The role of the primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conscious perception is debated. The global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness predicts that PFC neurons should contain a detailed code of the current conscious contents. We discuss whether the … [read more]

♦  Berkovitch L, Charles L, Del Cul A, Hamdani N, Delavest M, Sarrazin S, Mangin JF, Guevara P, Ji E, d’Albis MA, Gaillard R, Bellivier F, Poupon C, Leboyer M, Tamouza R, Dehaene S, Houenou J. Disruption of Conscious Access in Psychosis Is Associated with Altered Structural Brain Connectivity. J Neurosci. 2021 Jan 20;41(3):513-523. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0945-20.2020. Epub 2020 Nov 23. PMID: 33229501; PMCID: PMC7821858.

According to global neuronal workspace (GNW) theory, conscious access relies on long-distance cerebral connectivity to allow a global neuronal ignition coding for conscious content. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which structural … [read more]

♦  Bieberich E. Introduction to the fractality principle of consciousness and the sentyon postulate. Cognit Comput. 2012 Mar;4(1):13-28. doi: 10.1007/s12559-011-9104-5. PMID: 23950765; PMCID: PMC3741678.

Recently, consciousness research has gained much attention. Indeed, the question at stake is significant: why is the brain not just a computing device, but generates a perception from within? I will first discuss the fundamental challenges in current consciousness … [read more] 

♦  Bisenius S, Trapp S, Neumann J, Schroeter ML. Identifying neural correlates of visual consciousness with ALE meta-analyses. Neuroimage. 2015 Nov 15;122:177-87. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.07.070. Epub 2015 Aug 1. PMID: 26241685.

Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) have been a topic of study for nearly two decades. The question whether single (striate or extrastriate) regions or a network consisting of extrastriate areas that project directly to fronto-parietal regions are necessary and … [read more]

♦  Black D. The global workspace theory, the phenomenal concept strategy, and the distribution of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2020 Sep;84:102992. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102992. Epub 2020 Aug 6. PMID: 32771955.

Peter Carruthers argues that the global workspace theory implies there are no facts of the matter about animal consciousness. I argue there are introspectable inferential connections from phenomenal concepts to functional concepts that scientists can use … [read more]

♦  Blain-Moraes S, Mashour GA, Lee H, Huggins JE, Lee U. Altered cortical communication in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neurosci Lett. 2013 May 24;543:172-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2013.03.028. Epub 2013 Apr 6. PMID: 23567743; PMCID: PMC3716378.

Feedback connectivity has been associated with conscious state and was found to be independent of ALS symptom severity in this study, which may have significant implications for the detection of consciousness in individuals with advanced ALS. We suggest that increases in … [read more]

♦  Block N. What Is Wrong with the No-Report Paradigm and How to Fix It. Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Dec;23(12):1003-1013. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.10.001. Epub 2019 Oct 31. PMID: 31676213.

Is consciousness based in prefrontal circuits involved in cognitive processes like thought, reasoning, and memory or is it based in sensory areas in the back of the neocortex? However, the no-report paradigm is problematic because, even in the absence of report … [read more]

♦  Block N. Paradox and cross purposes in recent work on consciousness. Cognition. 2001 Apr;79(1-2):197-219. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00129-3. PMID: 11164028.

Functionalists about consciousness identify consciousness with a role; physicalists identify consciousness with an implementer of that role. The global workspace theory of consciousness fits the functionalist perspective, but the physical … [read more]

♦  Blum L, Blum M. A theory of consciousness from a theoretical computer science perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 May 24;119(21):e2115934119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2115934119. Epub 2022 May 20. PMID: 35594400; PMCID: PMC9171770.

The CTM is influenced by Alan Turing’s simple yet powerful model of computation, the Turing machine (TM), and by the global workspace theory (GWT) of consciousness originated by cognitive neuroscientist Bernard Baars and further developed by him, Stanislas … [read more]

♦  Bola M, Sabel BA. Dynamic reorganization of brain functional networks during cognition. Neuroimage. 2015 Jul 1;114:398-413. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.03.057. Epub 2015 Mar 28. PMID: 25828884.

Our findings suggest that dense and clustered connectivity between the hub nodes belonging to different modules is the “network fingerprint” of cognition. Such reorganization patterns might facilitate global integration of information and provide a substrate for a  … [read more] 

♦  Bowman H, Jones W, Pincham H, Fleming S, Cleeremans A, Smith M. Modelling the simultaneous encoding/serial experience theory of the perceptual moment: a blink of meta-experience. Neurosci Conscious. 2022 Mar 2;2022(1):niac003. doi: 10.1093/nc/niac003. PMID: 35242362; PMCID: PMC8889941. 

Meta-experiential self-observation is common to many computational models, including connectionist interpretations of consciousness, Bayesian observers and the readout-enhanced simultaneous type/serial token (reSTST) model. Specifically, we (i) inform theories of … [read more]

♦  Brown R, Lau H, LeDoux JE. Understanding the Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness. Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Sep;23(9):754-768. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.06.009. Epub 2019 Jul 30. PMID: 31375408.

The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order … [read more]

♦  Brown R, LeDoux J. Higher-order memory schema and consciousness experience. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):213-215. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1729713. Epub 2020 Feb 25. PMID: 32097576.

In the interesting and thought-provoking article Grazziano and colleagues argue for their Attention Schema Theory (AST) of consciousness. They present AST as a unification of Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Illusionism, and the Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theory … [read more] 

♦  Budaev S, Kristiansen TS, Giske J, Eliassen S. Computational animal welfare: towards cognitive architecture models of animal sentience, emotion and wellbeing. R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Dec 23;7(12):201886. doi: 10.1098/rsos.201886. PMID: 33489298; PMCID: PMC7813262.

Yet, even though there is significant progress in elucidating the neurobiology of human consciousness, animal consciousness is still a mystery. We propose that computational animal welfare science emerges at the intersection of animal behaviour, welfare and … [read more]

♦  Carruthers G. What makes us conscious of our own agency? And why the conscious versus unconscious representation distinction matters. Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Jun 23;8:434. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00434. PMID: 25002841; PMCID: PMC4066842.

Although these two single function views seem like dead ends, multifunction hypotheses such as the global workspace theory remain live options which we should consider. I close by considering a non-functionalist answer to the Hard Question: perhaps it is not a difference in the use to which the representation is put, but a difference in the nature of the representation … [read more]

♦  Carruthers P. Comparative psychology without consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2018 Aug;63:47-60. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2018.06.012. Epub 2018 Jun 23. PMID: 29940429.

The goal of this paper is to establish the truth of the following conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct, and is fully reductive in nature, then we should stop asking questions about consciousness in nonhuman a … [read more]

♦  Chen Y, Zhang J. How Energy Supports Our Brain to Yield Consciousness: Insights From Neuroimaging Based on the Neuroenergetics Hypothesis. Front SystNeurosci. 2021 Jul 6;15:648860. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.648860. PMID: 34295226; PMCID: PMC8291083.

Various suggested neuronal mechanisms, including the information integration theory (IIT), global neuronal workspace theory (GNWS), and neuronal construction of time and space as in the context of the temporospatial theory of consciousness (TTC), have been … [read more]

♦  Ching ASM, Kim J, Davis C. Auditory-visual integration during nonconscious perception. Cortex. 2019 Aug;117:1-15. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.02.014. Epub 2019 Mar 1. PMID: 30925308. 

Our study proposes a test of a key assumption of the most prominent model of consciousness – the global workspace (GWS) model (e.g., Baars, 2002, 2005, 2007; Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Mudrik, Faivre, & Koch, 2014). As the GWS model does not account … [read more]

♦  Cho SB, Baars BJ, Newman J. A Neural Global Workspace Model for Conscious Attention. Neural Netw. 1997 Oct 1;10(7):1195-1206. doi: 10.1016/s0893-6080(97)00060-9. PMID: 12662511.

Considerable progress is being made in interdisciplinary efforts to develop a general theory of the neural correlates of consciousness. Developments of Baars’ Global Workspace theory over the past decade are examples of this progress. It is posited that … [read more]

♦  Cignetti F, Vaugoyeau M, Nazarian B, Roth M, Anton JL, Assaiante C. Boosted activation of right inferior frontoparietal network: a basis for illusory movement awareness. Hum Brain Mapp. 2014 Oct;35(10):5166-78. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22541. Epub 2014 May 5. PMID: 24798824; PMCID: PMC6869717.

The feeling of illusory movement is considered important in the study of human behavior because it is deeply related to motor consciousness. However, the neural basis underlying the illusion of movement remains to be understood. These results suggest that activation of … [read more]

♦  Cleeremans A, Achoui D, Beauny A, Keuninckx L, Martin JR, Muñoz-Moldes S, Vuillaume L, de Heering A. Learning to Be Conscious. Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Feb;24(2):112-123. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.11.011. Epub 2019 Dec 28. PMID: 31892458.

Consciousness remains a formidable challenge. Different theories of consciousness have proposed vastly different mechanisms to account for phenomenal experience. Here, appealing to aspects of global workspace theory, higher-order theories, social … [read more]

♦  De Brigard F. The role of attention in conscious recollection. Front Psychol. 2012 Feb 10;3:29. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00029. PMID: 22363305; PMCID: PMC3276975.

Most research on the relationship between attention and consciousness has been limited to perception. However, perceptions are not the only kinds of mental contents of which we can be conscious. … [read more]

♦  de Haan EHF, Scholte HS, Pinto Y, Foschi N, Polonara G, Fabri M. Singularity and consciousness: A neuropsychological contribution. J Neuropsychol. 2021 Mar;15(1):1-19. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12234. Epub 2021 Feb 1. PMID: 33522716; PMCID: PMC8048575.

In common sense experience based on introspection, consciousness is singular. There is only one ‘me’ and that is the one that is conscious. This means that ‘singularity’ is a defining aspect of ‘consciousness’. However, the three main theories of consciousness … [read more]

♦  De Ridder D, Vanneste S, Langguth B, Llinas R. Thalamocortical Dysrhythmia: A Theoretical Update in Tinnitus. Front Neurol. 2015 Jun 9;6:124. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2015.00124. PMID: 26106362; PMCID: PMC4460809.

Theta burst-firing increases network synchrony and recruitment, a mechanism, which might enable long-range synchrony, which in turn could represent a means for finding the missing thalamocortical information and for gaining access to consciousness. Theta oscillations could … [read more]

♦  Dehaene S, Changeux JP, Naccache L, Sackur J, Sergent C. Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy. Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 May;10(5):204-11. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.007. Epub 2006 Apr 17. PMID: 16603406.

Here we attempt to make sense of these dissenting results. On the basis of the global neuronal workspace hypothesis, we propose a taxonomy that distinguishes between vigilance and access to conscious report, as well as between subliminal, preconscious and conscious … [read more]

♦  Dehaene S, Changeux JP. Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing. Neuron. 2011 Apr 28;70(2):200-27. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.03.018. PMID: 21521609.

We compare these findings to current theoretical models of conscious processing, including the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) model according to which conscious access occurs when incoming information is made globally available to multiple brain systems … [read more]

♦  Dehaene S, Naccache L. Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework. Cognition. 2001 Apr;79(1-2):1-37. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00123-2. PMID: 11164022.

We then propose a theoretical framework that synthesizes those facts: the hypothesis of a global neuronal workspace. This framework postulates that, at any given time, many modular cerebral networks are active in parallel and process information in an unconscious … [read more]

♦  Dennett D. Are we explaining consciousness yet? Cognition. 2001 Apr;79(1-2):221-37. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00130-x. PMID: 11164029.

Theorists are converging from quite different quarters on a version of the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, but there are residual confusions to be dissolved. In particular, theorists must resist the temptation to see global … [read more]

♦  Doerig A, Schurger A, Hess K, Herzog MH. The unfolding argument: Why IIT and other causal structure theories cannot explain consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2019 Jul;72:49-59. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.04.002. Epub 2019 May 9. PMID: 31078047.

How can we explain consciousness? This question has become a vibrant topic of neuroscience research in recent decades. A large body of empirical results has been accumulated, and many theories have been proposed. Certain theories suggest that consciousness should be … [read more]

♦  Doradzińska Ł, Wójcik MJ, Paź M, Nowicka MM, Nowicka A, Bola M. Unconscious perception of one’s own name modulates amplitude of the P3B ERP component. Neuropsychologia. 2020 Oct;147:107564. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107564. Epub 2020 Jul 21. PMID: 32707162.

Current theories interpret P3b either as a correlate of perceptual consciousness, or as reflecting cognitive processes, like working memory and executive functions. Taken as a whole, our results provide evidence against the interpretation of P3b as a correlate of … [read more]

♦  Dung L. Assessing tests of animal consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2022 Oct;105:103410. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103410. Epub 2022 Sep 15. PMID: 36115312.

To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on … [read more]

♦  Ebner C, Schroll H, Winther G, Niedeggen M, Hamker FH. Open and closed cortico-subcortical loops: A neuro-computational account of access to consciousness in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm. Conscious Cogn. 2015 Sep;35:295-307. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.02.007. Epub 2015 Mar 21. PMID: 25802010.

How the brain decides which information to process ‘consciously’ has been debated over for decades without a simple explanation at hand. We propose a biologically plausible neuro-computational model of how the brain controls access to consciousness to explain how … [read more]

♦  Edelman GM, Gally JA, Baars BJ. Biology of consciousness. Front Psychol. 2011 Jan 25;2:4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004. PMID: 21713129; PMCID: PMC3111444.

The Dynamic Core and Global Workspace hypotheses were independently put forward to provide mechanistic and biologically plausible accounts of how brains generate conscious mental content. The Dynamic Core proposes that reentrant neural activity in the thalamocortical … [read more]

♦  Esser S, Lustig C, Haider H. What triggers explicit awareness in implicit sequence learning? Implications from theories of consciousness. Psychol Res. 2022 Jul;86(5):1442-1457. doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01594-3. Epub 2021 Sep 29. PMID: 34586489; PMCID: PMC9177494.

We review hitherto existing theoretical views and evaluate their compatibility with two current, successful scientific concepts of consciousness: The Global Workspace Theory and Higher-Order Thought Theories. … [read more]

♦  Faivre N, Koch C. Temporal structure coding with and without awareness. Cognition. 2014 Jun;131(3):404-14. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.02.008. Epub 2014 Mar 27. PMID: 24681581.

These similar findings at two different hierarchical levels of processing suggest that temporal integration windows shrink in the absence of perceptual awareness. We discuss this phenomenon as a key prediction of the global neuronal workspace and the information … [read more]

♦  Filimonov D, Railo H, Revonsuo A, Koivisto M. Modality-specific and modality-general electrophysiological correlates of visual and auditory awareness: Evidence from a bimodal ERP experiment. Neuropsychologia. 2022 Feb 10;166:108154. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108154. Epub 2022 Jan 10. PMID: 35016890.

A later positive amplitude difference, whose early part was modality-specific, possibly reflecting access to global workspace, and later part shared modality-general features, possibly indicating higher level cognitive processing involving the decision making, was a … [read more]

♦  Förster J, Koivisto M, Revonsuo A. ERP and MEG correlates of visual consciousness: The second decade. Conscious Cogn. 2020 Apr;80:102917. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102917. Epub 2020 Mar 16. PMID: 32193077.

Two earlier extensive reviews ten years ago had concluded that VAN is the earliest and most reliable correlate of visual phenomenal consciousness, whereas LP probably reflects later processes associated with reflective/access consciousness. The result corroborate … [read more]

♦  Franklin S. Global Workspace Theory, LIDA and IDyOT. Phys Life Rev. 2020 Dec;34-35:44-45. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2020.04.002. Epub 2020 May 18. PMID: 32444320.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2020.04.002

♦  Franklin S, Graesser A. A software agent model of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 1999 Sep;8(3):285-301. doi: 10.1006/ccog.1999.0391. PMID: 10487784.

Baars (1988, 1997) has proposed a psychological theory of consciousness, called global workspace theory. The present study describes a software agent implementation of that theory, called “Conscious” Mattie (CMattie). Baars (1997) lists the psychological … [read more]

♦  Freeman WJ. The emergence of mind and emotion in the evolution of neocortex. Riv Psichiatr. 2011 Sep-Dec;46(5-6):281-7. doi: 10.1708/1009.10972. PMID: 22677.

The power-law connectivity of cortex supports the scale-free dynamics of the global workspace in brains ranging from mouse to whale. That dynamics in humans holds the secrets of speech and symbol utilization. By recursive interactions in vast areas of human neocortex … [read more]

♦  Fu Q, Liu YJ, Dienes Z, Wu J, Chen W, Fu X. Neural Correlates of Subjective Awareness for Natural Scene Categorization of Color Photographs and Line-Drawings. Front Psychol. 2017 Feb 15;8:210. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00210. PMID: 28261141; PMCID: PMC5309232.

It remains controversial whether visual awareness is correlated with early activation indicated by VAN (visual awareness negativity), as the recurrent process hypothesis theory proposes, or with later activation indicated by P3 or LP (late positive), as suggested by global … [read more]

♦  Gaillard R, Del Cul A. Un modèle scientifique de la conscience : implications possibles pour les pathologies neuropsychiatriques [A scientific model of consciousness: implications for neuropsychiatic diseases]. Psychol Neuropsychiatr Vieil. 2007 Dec;5(4):261-7. French. doi : 10.1684/pnv.2007.0107. PMID: 18048104.

Consciousness is an essential property of human cognition. According to the “Global neuronal workspace” hypothesis designed by Dehaene et al., consciousness results from amplification and synchronisation of distant processors. We conclude on the … [read more]

♦  Glazebrook JF. Biased competition in the global workspace: comment on “Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: an evolutionary perspective” by R. Wallace. Phys Life Rev. 2012 Dec;9(4):454-5; discussion 458-9. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2012.10.002. Epub 2012 Oct 13. PMID: 23085287.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2012.10.002

♦  Globus GG, O’Carroll CP. Nonlocal neurology: beyond localization to holonomy. Med Hypotheses. 2010 Nov;75(5):425-32. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2010.04.012. Epub 2010 Apr 24. PMID: 20418020.

Relevant models include self-organizing nonlinear brain dynamics, global workspace and dynamic core theories. However such models are inconsistent with certain clinical phenomena found in Charles Bonnet syndrome, disjunctive agnosia and schizophrenia, where there is … [read more]

♦  Graziano MSA, Guterstam A, Bio BJ, Wilterson AI. Toward a standard model of consciousness: Reconciling the attention schema, global workspace, higher-order thought, and illusionist theories. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):155-172. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2019.1670630. Epub 2019 Sep 26. PMID: 31556341.

Here we examine how people’s understanding of consciousness may have been shaped by an implicit theory of mind. This social cognition approach may help to make sense of an apparent divide between the physically incoherent consciousness we think we have and the … [read more]

♦  Hadid V, Lepore F. From Cortical Blindness to Conscious Visual Perception: Theories on Neuronal Networks and Visual Training Strategies. Front Syst Neurosci. 2017 Aug 29;11:64. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2017.00064. PMID: 28912694; PMCID: PMC5583595.

This article discusses type I and type II blindsight in a neuronal framework of altered global workspace, resulting from inefficient perception, attention and conscious networks. To enhance synchronization and create global availability for residual abilities … [read more]

 

♦  Hare SM. Hallucinations: A Functional Network Model of How Sensory Representations Become Selected for Conscious Awareness in Schizophrenia. Front Neurosci. 2021 Nov 23;15:733038. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.733038. PMID: 34887720; PMCID: PMC8650055.

No existing theory of hallucinations has specified such a “selection mechanism.” Global Workspace (GW) theorists argue that the brain’s interconnected processors select relevant piece(s) of information for broadcasting to other brain processors, rendering the … [read more]

♦  Hutchinson BT. Toward a theory of consciousness: A review of the neural correlates of inattentional blindness. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2019 Sep;104:87-99. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.06.003. Epub 2019 Jun 4. PMID: 31173773.

The neuroscientific study of consciousness involves examining candidate markers of consciousness under conditions where awareness varies. I conclude by addressing the limitations this literature has been challenged with and offer recommendations for how future … [read more]

♦  Hwang E, Brown RE, Kocsis B, Kim T, McKenna JT, McNally JM, Han HB, Choi JH. Optogenetic stimulation of basal forebrain parvalbumin neurons modulates the cortical topography of auditory steady-state responses. Brain Struct Funct. 2019 May;224(4):1505-1518. doi: 10.1007/s00429-019-01845-5. Epub 2019 Mar 2. PMID: 30826928; PMCID: PMC6532347.

Furthermore, synchronization within a frontal hub and long-range cortical interactions were enhanced.Thus, phasic discharge of BF PV neurons changes cortical processing in a manner reminiscent of global workspace models of attention and consciousness … [read more]

♦  Jerath R, Crawford MW, Barnes VA. A unified 3D default space consciousness model combining neurological and physiological processes that underlie conscious experience. Front Psychol. 2015 Aug 27;6:1204. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01204. PMID: 26379573; PMCID: PMC4550793.

The Global Workspace Theory and Information Integration Theory are two of the most currently accepted consciousness models; however, these models do not address many aspects of conscious experience. We compare these models to our previously proposed … [read more]

♦  Kemmerer D. Are we ever aware of concepts? A critical question for the Global Neuronal Workspace, Integrated Information, and Attended Intermediate-Level Representation theories of consciousness. Neurosci Conscious. 2015 Jan;2015(1):niv006. doi: 10.1093/nc/niv006. Epub 2015 Oct 2. PMID: 30135741; PMCID: PMC6089087.

To locate consciousness in the flow of synaptic activity in the brain, we must first locate it in the flow of information processing in the mind. I focus first on two of the most prominent neuroscientific theories of consciousness-namely, Stanislas Dehaene’s … [read more]

♦  Kotchoubey B, Vogel D, Lang S, Müller F. What kind of consciousness is minimal? Brain Inj. 2014;28(9):1156-63. doi: 10.3109/02699052.2014.920523. PMID: 25099020.

A comparison between unitary and non-unitary views on minimal consciousness. First, unitary (all-or-none) and non-unitary (gradual or continuous) models of consciousness are defined as they have been developed in both philosophy … [read more]

♦  Kozma R, Baars BJ, Geld N. Evolutionary Advantages of Stimulus-Driven EEG Phase Transitions in the Upper Cortical Layers. Front Syst Neurosci. 2021 Dec 8;15:784404. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.784404. PMID: 34955771; PMCID: PMC8692947.

The rapid expansion of essentially isotropic phase cones is consistent with the propagation of perceptual broadcasts postulated by Global Workspace Theory (GWT). What is the evolutionary advantage of brains operating with repeatedly collapsing dynamics? … [read more]

♦  Krauss P, Maier A. Will We Ever Have Conscious Machines? Front Comput Neurosci. 2020 Dec 22;14:556544. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2020.556544. PMID: 33414712; PMCID: PMC7782472.

We investigate common machine learning approaches with respect to their potential ability to become self-aware. We realize that many important algorithmic steps toward machines with a core consciousness have already been taken … [read more]

♦  Kronsted C, Kugele S, Neemeh ZA, Ryan KJ Jr, Franklin S. Embodied Intelligence: Smooth Coping in the Learning Intelligent Decision Agent Cognitive Architecture. Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 6;13:846931. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846931. PMID: 35465485; PMCID: PMC9019476.

LIDA’s implementation of consciousness enables us to account for the phenomenology of smooth coping, something that few cognitive architectures would be able to do. In addition, never-conscious dorsal stream information and associated sensorimotor processes provide … [read more]

♦  Lambert I, Arthuis M, McGonigal A, Wendling F, Bartolomei F. Alteration of global workspace during loss of consciousness: a study of parietal seizures. Epilepsia. 2012 Dec;53(12):2104-10. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2012.03690.x. Epub 2012 Sep 27. PMID: 23016829.

Loss of consciousness (LOC) in epileptic seizures has a strongly negative impact on quality of life. Recently, we showed that LOC occurring during temporal lobe seizures was correlated with a nonlinear increase of neural synchrony in … [read more]

♦  Lamme VA. How neuroscience will change our view on consciousness. Cogn Neurosci. 2010 Sep;1(3):204-20. doi: 10.1080/17588921003731586. Epub 2010 Apr 15. PMID: 24168336.

Is there consciousness in machines? Or in animals? What happens to consciousness when we are asleep, or in vegetative state? This has fooled us into thinking that we know what we are conscious of. The scientific equivalent of this is Global Workspace … [read more]

♦  Lamme VAF. Visual Functions Generating Conscious Seeing. Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 14;11:83. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00083. PMID: 32116908; PMCID: PMC7034432.

It is argued that perceptual organization is the function that is central to understanding the transition from unconscious to conscious seeing. It is discussed what this implies for theories of consciousness such as Recurrent Processing Theory, Higher Order Thought Theory … [read more]

♦  Landry M, Appourchaux K, Raz A. Elucidating unconscious processing with instrumental hypnosis. Front Psychol. 2014 Jul 28;5:785. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00785. PMID: 25120504; PMCID: PMC4112913.

Most researchers leverage bottom-up suppression to unlock the underlying mechanisms of unconscious processing. However, a top-down approach – for example via hypnotic suggestion – paves the road to experimental innovation … [read more]

♦  Lau H, Rosenthal D. Empirical support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness. Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Aug;15(8):365-73. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.009. Epub 2011 Jul 6. PMID: 21737339.

Higher-order theories of consciousness argue that conscious awareness crucially depends on higher-order mental representations that represent oneself as being in particular mental states. We focus on evidence that distinguishes the higher-order view from its alternative … [read more]

♦  Lau H. Theoretical motivations for investigating the neural correlates of consciousness. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci. 2011 Jan;2(1):1-7. doi: 10.1002/wcs.93. Epub 2010 Jun 14. PMID: 26301908.

Different views of the neural correlates turn out to support different theories, such as the global workspace theory, local visual processing theories, and the higher-order representation theory. Therefore, studying the neural correlates of consciousness may … [read more]

♦  Lemaire JJ, Pontier B, Chaix R, El Ouadih Y, Khalil T, Sinardet D, Achim V, Postelnicu A, Coste J, Germain V, Sarret C, Sontheimer A. Neural correlates of consciousness and related disorders: From phenotypic descriptors of behavioral and relative consciousness to cortico-subcortical circuitry. Neurochirurgie. 2022 Feb;68(2):212-222. doi: 10.1016/j.neuchi.2021.05.003. Epub 2021 May 26. PMID: 34051246.

We report a review of medical aspects of the consciousness. The behavioral dimension, phenotypic descriptors, relative consciousness and neural correlates of consciousness and related disorders were addressed successively in a holistic and chronological … [read more]

♦ Linton P. V1 as an egocentric cognitive map. Neurosci Conscious. 2021 Sep 14;2021(2):niab017. doi: 10.1093/nc/niab017. PMID: 34532068; PMCID: PMC8439394.

Second, we use this insight to propose a low-level account of visual consciousness in contrast to mid-level accounts (recurrent processing theory; integrated information theory) and higher-level accounts (higher-order thought; global workspace theory). … [read more]

♦  Lin J, Jin XG, Yang JG. A hybrid neural network model for consciousness. J Zhejiang Univ Sci. 2004 Nov;5(11):1440-8. doi: 10.1631/jzus.2004.1440. PMID: 15495339.

A new framework for consciousness is introduced based upon traditional artificial neural network models. Accordingly this framework is composed of three layers, physical mnemonic layer and abstract thinking layer, which cooperate together through a recognition layer to … [read more]

♦  Li T, Tang H, Zhu J, Zhang JH. The finer scale of consciousness: quantum theory. Ann Transl Med. 2019 Oct;7(20):585. doi: 10.21037/atm.2019.09.09. PMID: 31807566; PMCID: PMC6861790.

Consciousness is a multidisciplinary problem that has puzzled all human beings since the origin of human life. Being defined in various pointcuts by philosophers, biologists, physicists, and neuroscientists, the definitive explanation of consciousness is still … [read more]

♦  Lou HC, Joensson M, Kringelbach ML. Yoga lessons for consciousness research: a paralimbic network balancing brain resource allocation. Front Psychol. 2011 Dec 16;2:366. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00366. PMID: 22203808; PMCID: PMC3241341.

Consciousness has been proposed to play a key role in shaping flexible learning and as such is thought to confer an evolutionary advantage. Here we hypothesize, however, that the paralimbic network serves a crucial role in balancing and regulating brain resource … [read more]

♦  Luczak A, Kubo Y. Predictive Neuronal Adaptation as a Basis for Consciousness. Front Syst Neurosci. 2022 Jan 11;15:767461. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.767461. PMID: 35087383; PMCID: PMC8789243.

Following on these ideas, here we examined if surprise minimization by single neurons could be a basis for consciousness. First, we showed in simulations that as a neural network learns a new task, then the surprise within neurons (defined as the difference between actual … [read more]

♦  Ludwig D. The functional contributions of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2022 Sep;104:103383. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103383. Epub 2022 Aug 10. PMID: 35963081.

The most widely endorsed philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness assume that it contributes a single functional capacity to an organism’s information processing toolkit. In this paper, I first develop a general methodological framework for isolating the … [read more]

♦  Ludwig D. The functions of consciousness in visual processing. Neurosci Conscious. 2023 Jan 4;2023(1):niac018. doi: 10.1093/nc/niac018. PMID: 36628118;PMCID: PMC9825248. 

Conscious experiences form a relatively diverse class of psychological phenomena, supported by a range of distinct neurobiological mechanisms. This diversity suggests that consciousness occupies a variety of different functional roles across different task domains … [read more]

♦  Lundervold A. On consciousness, resting state fMRI, and neurodynamics. Nonlinear Biomed Phys. 2010 Jun 3;4 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S9. doi: 10.1186/1753-4631-4-S1-S9. PMID: 20522270; PMCID: PMC2880806. 

During the last years, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain has been introduced as a new tool to measure consciousness, both in a clinical setting and in a basic neurocognitive research. Moreover, advanced mathematical methods and theories have arrived the field of fMRI (e.g. computational neuroimaging) … [read more]

♦  Madl T, Baars BJ, Franklin S. The timing of the cognitive cycle. PLoS One. 2011 Apr 25;6(4):e14803. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014803. PMID: 21541015; PMCID: PMC3081809.

In this paper we describe a timing model LIDA’s cognitive cycle. Based on empirical and simulation data we propose that an initial phase of perception (stimulus recognition) occurs 80-100 ms from stimulus onset under optimal conditions. Finally, we describe two … [read more]

♦  Maia TV, Cleeremans A. Consciousness: converging insights from connectionist modeling and neuroscience. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Aug;9(8):397-404. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.06.016. PMID: 16005677.

In this review, we emphasize the relevance of these models to understanding consciousness. Interestingly, the models we review have striking similarities to others directly aimed at implementing ‘global workspace theory’. All of these models embody a … [read more]

♦  Manzotti R, Chella A. Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness and the Intermediate Level Fallacy. Front Robot AI. 2018 Apr 18;5:39. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2018.00039. PMID: 33500925; PMCID: PMC7805708.  

Typical approaches as the global workspace, information integration, enaction, cognitive mechanisms, embodiment, i.e., the Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness, henceforth, GOFAC, share the … [read more]

♦ Marvan T, Polák M, Bachmann T, Phillips WA. Apical amplification-a cellular mechanism of conscious perception? Neurosci Conscious. 2021 Oct 13;2021(2):niab036. doi: 10.1093/nc/niab036. PMID: 34650815; PMCID: PMC8511476.

Apical amplification provides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized by global neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells … [read more]

♦  Mashour GA, Roelfsema P, Changeux JP, Dehaene S. Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis. Neuron. 2020 Mar 4;105(5):776-798. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.01.026. PMID: 32135090; PMCID: PMC8770991.

We review the central tenets and neuroanatomical basis of the global neuronal workspace (GNW) hypothesis, which attempts to account for the main scientific observations regarding the elementary mechanisms of conscious processing in the human brain. The GNW … [read more]

♦  Mashour GA, Palanca BJ, Basner M, Li D, Wang W, Blain-Moraes S, Lin N, Maier K, Muench M, Tarnal V, Vanini G, Ochroch EA, Hogg R, Schwartz M, Maybrier H, Hardie R, Janke E, Golmirzaie G, Picton P, McKinstry-Wu AR, Avidan MS, Kelz MB.  Recovery of consciousness and cognition after general anesthesia in humans. Elife. 2021 May 10;10:e59525. doi: 10.7554/eLife.59525. PMID: 33970101; PMCID: PMC8163502.

Contrary to our hypothesis, executive function returned first. Early engagement of prefrontal cortex in recovery of consciousness and cognition is consistent with global neuronal workspace theory. To find out more, Mashour et al. studied the patterns of … [read more]

♦  Mather JA. Cephalopod consciousness: behavioural evidence. Conscious Cogn. 2008 Mar;17(1):37-48. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2006.11.006. Epub 2007 Jan 19. PMID: 17240163.

Behavioural evidence suggests that cephalopod molluscs may have a form of primary consciousness. First, the linkage of brain to behaviour seen in lateralization, sleep and through a developmental context is similar to that of mammals and birds. Third, these animals are … [read more]

♦  McClelland T, Bayne T. Concepts, contents, and consciousness. Neurosci Conscious. 2016 Jan;2016(1):niv012. doi: 10.1093/nc/niv012. Epub 2016 Mar 5. PMID: 30135743; PMCID: PMC6089095.

In his paper ‘Are we ever aware of concepts? A critical question for the Global Neuronal Workspace, Integrated Information, and Attended Intermediate-Level Representation theories of consciousness’ (2015, this journal), Kemmerer defends a conservative account … [read more]

♦  Mehta N, Mashour GA. General and specific consciousness: a first-order representationalist approach. Front Psychol. 2013 Jul 16;4:407. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00407. PMID: 23882231; PMCID: PMC3712269.

It is widely acknowledged that a complete theory of consciousness should explain general consciousness (what makes a state conscious at all) and specific consciousness (what gives a conscious state its particular phenomenal quality). We suggest that recent … [read more]

♦  Mei N, Santana R, Soto D. Informative neural representations of unseen contents during higher-order processing in human brains and deep artificial networks. Nat Hum Behav. 2022 May;6(5):720-731. doi: 10.1038/s41562-021-01274-7. Epub 2022 Feb 3. Erratum in: Nat Hum Behav. 2022 Apr 28;: PMID: 35115676.

A framework to pinpoint the scope of unconscious processing is critical to improve models of visual consciousness. Previous research observed brain signatures of unconscious processing in visual cortex, but these were not reliably identified. Classifiers trained with … [read more]

♦  Melloni L, Mudrik L, Pitts M, Bendtz K, Ferrante O, Gorska U, Hirschhorn R, Khalaf A, Kozma C, Lepauvre A, Liu L, Mazumder D, Richter D, Zhou H, Blumenfeld H, Boly M, Chalmers DJ, Devore S, Fallon F, de Lange FP, Jensen O, Kreiman G, Luo H, Panagiotaropoulos TI, Dehaene S, Koch C, Tononi G. An adversarial collaboration protocol for testing contrasting predictions of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theory. PLoS One. 2023 Feb 10;18(2):e0268577. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268577. PMID: 36763595; PMCID: PMC9916582.

These theories have developed in parallel, with little to no cross-talk among them. To advance research on consciousness, we established an adversarial collaboration between proponents of two of the major theories in the field, Global Neuronal Workspace and … [read more]

♦  Michel M. A role for the anterior insular cortex in the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2017 Mar;49:333-346. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2017.02.004. Epub 2017 Feb 27. PMID: 28246058.

According to the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, consciousness results from the global broadcast of information throughout the brain. The anterior insular cortex is part of this global neuronal workspace, but … [read more]

 

♦  Michel M, Fleming SM, Lau H, Lee ALF, Martinez-Conde S, Passingham RE, Peters MAK, Rahnev D, Sergent C, Liu K. An Informal Internet Survey on the Current State of Consciousness Science. Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 5;9:2134. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02134. PMID: 30455661; PMCID: PMC6230957.

As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field … [read more]

♦  Modolo J, Hassan M, Ruffini G, Legros A. Probing the circuits of conscious perception with magnetophosphenes. J Neural Eng. 2020 Jul 3;17(3):036034. doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/ab97f7. PMID: 32470963.

We aimed at characterizing, in non-invasive human brain recordings, the large-scale, coordinated activation of distant brain regions thought to occur during conscious perception. This process is termed ignition in the Global Workspace Theory, and … [read more]

♦  Montemayor C, Haladjian HH. Recurrent processing theory versus global neuronal workspace theory: a comment on ‘The relationship between attention and consciousness: an expanded taxonomy and implications for ‘no-report’ paradigms’ by Pitts et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2019 Apr 15;374(1770):20180517. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0517. PMID: 30966894; PMCID: PMC6460080.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0517

♦  Mudrik L, Faivre N, Koch C. Information integration without awareness. Trends Cogn Sci. 2014 Sep;18(9):488-96. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.04.009. Epub 2014 Jun 2. Erratum in: Trends Cogn Sci. 2016 Jul;20(7):559. PMID: 24933626.

Information integration and consciousness are closely related, if not interdependent. But, what exactly is the nature of their relation? We suggest that, whereas some integrative processes can occur without awareness, their scope is limited to smaller integration window … [read more]

♦ Munoz Musat E, Rohaut B, Sangare A, Benhaiem JM, Naccache L. Hypnotic Induction of Deafness to Elementary Sounds: An Electroencephalography Case-Study and a Proposed Cognitive and Neural Scenario. Front Neurosci. 2022 Mar 17;16:756651. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.756651. PMID: 35368254; PMCID: PMC8969744.

Taken together these results suggest the following plausible scenario: (i) preserved early processing of auditory information unaffected by hypnotic suggestion, (ii) conscious setting of an inhibitory process (ACC) preventing conscious access to sounds, (iii) functional … [read more]

♦  Naccache L. Visual phenomenal consciousness: a neurological guided tour. Prog Brain Res. 2005;150:185-95. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50013-X. PMID: 16186023.

In this chapter, I review some of the recent results relevant to visual phenomenal consciousness, which is an aspect of consciousness most frequently investigated in neuroscience. Through the exploration of neuropsychological syndromes such as “blindsight,” visual … [read more]

♦  Naccache L. Visual consciousness explained by its impairments. Curr Opin Neurol. 2015 Feb;28(1):45-50. doi: 10.1097/WCO.0000000000000158. PMID: 25490195.

The scientific study of the visual consciousness has been marked by significant recent achievements, resulting from an interaction between the exploration of cognition in both brain-damaged patients and healthy individuals … [read more] 

♦  Naccache L. Why and how access consciousness can account for phenomenal consciousness. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2018 Sep 19;373(1755):20170357. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0357. PMID: 30061470; PMCID: PMC6074081.

According to a popular distinction proposed by the philosopher Ned Block in 1995, our conscious experience would overflow the very limited set of what we can consciously report to ourselves and to others. He proposed to coin this limited consciousness ‘Access … [read more]

♦  Naccache L. Hard but so valuable to define hard criteria for empirical theories of consciousness. Cogn Neurosci. 2021 Jan-Jan;12(2):79-81. doi: 10.1080/17588928.2020.1839038. Epub 2020 Nov 16. PMID: 33196376.

I congratulate Doerig, Schurger, and Herzog for their stimulating contribution for an empirical approach to theories of consciousness. I must also admit that the excellent way Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) I’ve contributed to since 2001 passes the … [read more]

♦  Naccache L. Les bases cérébrales de la conscience phénoménale visuelle: une approche neurologique [The cerebral substrate of visual consciousness: a neurological approach]. Rev Neurol (Paris). 2004 Apr;160(4 Pt 1):395-400. French. doi: 10.1016/s0035-3787(04)70920-0. PMID: 15103263.

In this paper, we review some of the recent results relevant to visual phenomenal consciousness, which is the most scientifically investigated aspect of consciousness. We isolate several of those general principles through the exploration of neuropsychological … [read more]

♦  Nakatani C, Raffone A, van Leeuwen C. Efficiency of conscious access improves with coupling of slow and fast neural oscillations. J Cogn Neurosci. 2014 May;26(5):1168-79. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00540. Epub 2013 Dec 17. PMID:24345169.

Global workspace access is considered as a critical factor for the ability to report a visual target. A plausible candidate mechanism for global workspace access is coupling of slow and fast brain activity. … [read more]

♦  Nani A, Manuello J, Mancuso L, Liloia D, Costa T, Cauda F. The Neural Correlates of Consciousness and Attention: Two Sister Processes of the Brain. Front Neurosci. 2019 Oct 31;13:1169. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01169. PMID: 31749675; PMCID: PMC6842945.

Even though consciousness and attention have an overlapping pattern of neural activity, they should be considered as essentially separate brain processes. The contents of phenomenal consciousness are supposed to be associated with the activity of multiple … [read more]

♦  Niikawa T. A Map of Consciousness Studies: Questions and Approaches. Front Psychol. 2020 Oct 8;11:530152. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.530152. PMID: 33132949; PMCID: PMC7578362.

This article aims to present a map of consciousness studies, which consists of a list of fundamental questions about consciousness and existing approaches to them. In the final section, I demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed map of consciousness … [read more]

♦  Noel JP, Faivre N, Magosso E, Blanke O, Alais D, Wallace M. Multisensory perceptual awareness: Categorical or graded? Cortex. 2019 Nov;120:169-180. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.05.018. Epub 2019 Jun 27. PMID: 31323457.

To address this issue, we built a series of artificial neural networks containing distinct feedback connectivity from “multisensory” to “unisensory” cortices. In line with consciousness theories, we operationalized perceptual consciousness by the presence of … [read more]

♦  Noel JP, Ishizawa Y, Patel SR, Eskandar EN, Wallace MT. Leveraging Nonhuman Primate Multisensory Neurons and Circuits in Assessing Consciousness Theory. J Neurosci. 2019 Sep 18;39(38):7485-7500. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0934-19.2019. Epub 2019 Jul 29. PMID: 31358654; PMCID: PMC6750944.

Both the global neuronal workspace (GNW) and integrated information theory (IIT) posit that highly complex and interconnected networks engender perceptual awareness. Here, we first derive concrete and testable predictions from the global neuronal … [read more]

♦  Noirhomme Q, Soddu A, Lehembre R, Vanhaudenhuyse A, Boveroux P, Boly M, Laureys S. Brain connectivity in pathological and pharmacological coma. Front Syst Neurosci. 2010 Dec 20;4:160. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2010.00160. PMID: 21191476; PMCID: PMC3010745.

PET studies have identified a metabolic dysfunction in a widespread frontoparietal “global neuronal workspace” in DOC patients including the midline default mode network (“intrinsic” system) and the lateral frontoparietal cortices or “extrinsic system.” … [read more]

♦  Noy N, Bickel S, Zion-Golumbic E, Harel M, Golan T, Davidesco I, Schevon CA, McKhann GM, Goodman RR, Schroeder CE, Mehta AD, Malach R. Ignition’s glow: Ultra-fast spread of global cortical activity accompanying local “ignitions” in visual cortex during conscious visual perception. Conscious Cogn. 2015 Sep;35:206-24. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.03.006. Epub 2015 Mar 29. PMID: w25824626.

Despite extensive research, the spatiotemporal span of neuronal activations associated with the emergence of a conscious percept is still debated. The debate can be formulated in the context of local vs. global models, emphasizing local activity in visual cortex vs. … [read more]

♦  Panagiotaropoulos TI, Wang L, Dehaene S. Hierarchical architecture of conscious processing and subjective experience. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):180-183. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1760811. Epub 2020 May 18. PMID: 23303.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1760811

♦  Panda R, Thibaut A, Lopez-Gonzalez A, Escrichs A, Bahri MA, Hillebrand A, Deco G, Laureys S, Gosseries O, Annen J, Tewarie P. Disruption in structural-functional network repertoire and time-resolved subcortical fronto-temporoparietal connectivity in disorders of consciousness. Elife. 2022 Aug 2;11:e77462. doi: 10.7554/eLife.77462. PMID: 35916363; PMCID: PMC9385205.

Understanding recovery of consciousness and elucidating its underlying mechanism is believed to be crucial in the field of basic neuroscience and medicine. Ideas such as the global neuronal workspace (GNW) and the mesocircuit theory hypothesize that failure … [read more]

♦  Pang DKF, Elntib S. Strongly masked content retained in memory made accessible through repetition. Sci Rep. 2021 May 13;11(1):10284. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-89512-w. PMID: 33986370; PMCID: PMC8119432.

Extraction of meaningful information was severely impaired after 300 ms, and most data was lost after 700 ms. Our findings are congruent with theories of consciousness that are based on an integration of subliminal information and support theoretical predictions based on … [read more]

♦  Pang DKF, Elntib S. Further evidence and theoretical framework for a subliminal sensory buffer store (SSBS). Conscious Cogn. 2023 Jan;107:103452. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103452. Epub 2022 Dec 10. PMID: 36508898.

We recently provided evidence that strongly masked stimuli are not erased or overwritten but are briefly stored in a subliminal sensory buffer store (SSBS), where information can accumulate through repetition and become consciously accessible. SSBS supports a direct … [read more]

♦  Patniyot NS. Deficits in access consciousness, integrative function, and consequent autonoetic thinking in schizophrenia. Med Hypotheses. 2021 Oct;155:110664. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2021.110664. Epub 2021 Aug 13. PMID: 34425452.

Current theories on the nature and functioning of consciousness are discussed, which include Global Workspace Theory and metarepresentational characterizations. These describe a recursive, integrative quality to consciousness, contributed to by the fun … [read more]

♦  Phillips I, Morales J. The Fundamental Problem with No-Cognition Paradigms. Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Mar;24(3):165-167. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.11.010. Epub 2020 Jan 24. PMID: 31987719.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.11.010

♦  Pinto Y, de Haan EHF, Lamme VAF. The Split-Brain Phenomenon Revisited: A Single Conscious Agent with Split Perception. Trends Cogn Sci. 2017 Nov;21(11):835-851. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.09.003. Epub 2017 Sep 25. PMID: 28958646.

This view is a cornerstone of current consciousness research. In this review, we first discuss the evidence for the classical view. In addition to changing our view of the split-brain phenomenon, this new model also poses a serious challenge for current dominant … [read more]

♦  Pitts MA, Lutsyshyna LA, Hillyard SA. The relationship between attention and consciousness: an expanded taxonomy and implications for ‘no-report’ paradigms. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2018 Sep 19;373(1755):20170348. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0348. PMID: 30061462; PMCID: PMC6074089.

Tensions between global neuronal workspace theory and recurrent processing theory have sparked much debate in the field of consciousness research. Whether certain types of attention are necessary for phenomenal and access consciousness is considered … [read more]

♦  Prakash R. The conscious access hypothesis: Explaining the consciousness.Indian J Psychiatry. 2008 Jan;50(1):10-5. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.39752. PMID: 19771300; PMCID: PMC2745874.

The phenomenon of conscious awareness or consciousness is complicated but fascinating. Although this concept has intrigued the mankind since antiquity, exploration of consciousness from scientific perspectives is not very old. One of the most exciting hypotheses … [read more]

♦  Prakash R, Prakash O, Prakash S, Abhishek P, Gandotra S. Global workspace model of consciousness and its electromagnetic correlates. Ann Indian Acad Neurol. 2008 Jul;11(3):146-53. doi: 10.4103/0972-2327.42933. PMID: 19893660; PMCID: PMC2771980.

The global workspace of consciousness was proposed in its elementary framework by Baars, in 1982. One of the less-studied candidates for this global workspace is the electromagnetic field of the brain. The present work is a brief review of … [read more]

♦  Rabuffo G, Sorrentino P, Bernard C, Jirsa V. Spontaneous neuronal avalanches as a correlate of access consciousness. Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 21;13:1008407. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1008407. PMID: 36337573; PMCID: PMC9634647.

Decades of research have advanced our understanding of the biophysical mechanisms underlying consciousness. However, an overarching framework bridging between models of consciousness and the large-scale organization of spontaneous brain activity is still missing  … [read more]

♦  Raccah O, Block N, Fox KCR. Does the Prefrontal Cortex Play an Essential Role in Consciousness? Insights from Intracranial Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain. J Neurosci. 2021 Mar 10;41(10):2076-2087. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1141-20.2020. PMID: 33692142; PMCID: PMC8018764.

Conversely, stimulation of anterolateral prefrontal sites, often considered crucial in higher-order and global workspace theories of consciousness, seldom elicits any reportable alterations in consciousness. Overall, this evidence presents a … [read more]

♦  Raffone A, Srinivasan N. An adaptive workspace hypothesis about the neural correlates of consciousness: insights from neuroscience and meditation studies. Prog Brain Res. 2009;176:161-80. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(09)17620-3. PMID: 19733756.

We advance an adaptive workspace hypothesis about the NCC based on the global workspace model emphasizing transient resonant neurodynamics and prefrontal cortex function, as well as meditation-related characterizations of conscious experiences. Such … [read more]

♦  Raffone A, Pantani M. A global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2010 Jun;19(2):580-96. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.013. Epub 2010 Apr 9. PMID: 20382038.

Both the global workspace theory and Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, are central in the current debates about consciousness and the neural correlates of consciousness. In this article, a unifying global … [read more]

♦  Raffone A, Srinivasan N, van Leeuwen C. The interplay of attention and consciousness in visual search, attentional blink and working memory consolidation. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2014 Mar 17;369(1641):20130215. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0215. PMID: 24639586; PMCID: PMC3965169.

Here, we make an effort to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, a theory of consciousness based on the notion of global workspace (GW) and, on the other, a synthesis of theories of visual attention. TAC assumes multiple processing stages between early … [read more]

♦  Raffone A, Srinivasan N, van Leeuwen C. Rapid switching and complementary evidence accumulation enable flexibility of an all-or-none global workspace for control of attentional and conscious processing: a reply to Wyble et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 Feb 5;370(1661):20140315. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0315. PMID: 25533107; PMCID: PMC4275919.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0315

♦  Railo H, Revonsuo A, Koivisto M. Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for fast emergence of visual consciousness. Neurosci Conscious. 2015 Jan;2015(1):niv004. doi: 10.1093/nc/niv004. Epub 2015 Jul 30. PMID: 30774982; PMCID: PMC6368270.

We show that participants can report whether or not they consciously perceived a stimulus in just over 200 ms. These fast consciousness reports were extremely reliable, and did not include reflexive, unconscious responses. The neural events that causally generate … [read more]

♦  Reggia JA. The rise of machine consciousness: studying consciousness with computational models. Neural Netw. 2013 Aug;44:112-31. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2013.03.011. Epub 2013 Mar 26. PMID: 23597599.

Efforts to create computational models of consciousness have accelerated over the last two decades, creating a field that has become known as artificial consciousness. These models are largely found to fall into five categories based on the fundamental issue that … [read more]

♦  Reuter F, Del Cul A, Malikova I, Naccache L, Confort-Gouny S, Cohen L, Cherif AA, Cozzone PJ, Pelletier J, Ranjeva JP, Dehaene S, Audoin B. White matter damage impairs access to consciousness in multiple sclerosis. Neuroimage. 2009 Jan 15;44(2):590-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.08.024. Epub 2008 Aug 28. PMID: 18809500.

Global neuronal workspace theory predicts that damage to long-distance white matter (WM) tracts should impair access to consciousness during the perception of brief stimuli. This study provides clinical evidence of a relationship between impairments of … [read more]

♦  Robinson R. Exploring the “global workspace” of consciousness. PLoS Biol. 2009 Mar;7(3):e1000066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000066. Epub 2009 Mar 17. PMID: 20076729; PMCID: PMC2656553.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000066

♦  Rolls ET. Neural Computations Underlying Phenomenal Consciousness: A Higher Order Syntactic Thought Theory. Front Psychol. 2020 Apr 7;11:655. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00655. PMID: 32318008; PMCID: PMC7154119.

Problems are raised with the global workspace hypothesis of consciousness, for example about exactly how global the workspace needs to be for consciousness to suddenly be present. This provides a good evolutionary reason for the … [read more]

♦  Romo R, Rossi-Pool R. Towards a conscious model of consciousness. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):220-223. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1728241. Epub 2020 Feb 18. PMID: 32066320.

But, how does the brain generate a voluntary movement and adds consciousness to it? Here, we assume that these two processes can be explained by neuroscience, but a large proportion of our society -including some scientists- considers consciousness as some … [read more]

♦  Rosenthal D. Competing models of consciousness. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):176-179. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1736536. Epub 2020 Mar 4. PMID: 32126930.

[no abstract available] doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1736536

♦  Rudrauf D, Sergeant-Perthuis G, Belli O, Tisserand Y, Serugendo GDM. Modeling the subjective perspective of consciousness and its role in the control of behaviours. J Theor Biol. 2022 Feb 7;534:110957. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110957. Epub 2021 Nov 4. PMID: 34742776.

Consciousness has been hypothesized to operate as a global workspace, which accesses and integrates multimodal information in a unified manner, supports expectation violation monitoring and reduction, and the motivation, programming and control of action. … [read more]

♦  Rünger D, Frensch PA. Defining consciousness in the context of incidental sequence learning: theoretical considerations and empirical implications. Psychol Res. 2010 Mar;74(2):121-37. doi: 10.1007/s00426-008-0225-8. Epub 2009 Jan 14. PMID: 19142657.

This is, at least in part, due to a failure to ground research on implicit sequence learning in conceptual definitions of “consciousness” and “conscious sequence knowledge.” In this article the authors take up a definition of consciousness according to which … [read more]

♦  Safron A. An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of Consciousness: Combining Integrated Information and Global Neuronal Workspace Theories With the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework; Toward Solving the Hard Problem and Characterizing Agentic Causation. Front Artif Intell. 2020 Jun 9;3:30. doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.00030. PMID: 33733149; PMCID: PMC7861340.

I further describe how an integration of these frameworks may contribute to their evolution as unified systems theories and models of emergent causation. Then, inspired by both Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and the Harmonic Brain Modes framework … [read more]

♦  Safron A. Integrated world modeling theory expanded: Implications for the future of consciousness. Front Comput Neurosci. 2022 Nov 24;16:642397. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2022.642397. PMID: 36507308; PMCID: PMC9730424.

Integrated world modeling theory (IWMT) is a synthetic theory of consciousness that uses the free energy principle and active inference (FEP-AI) framework to combine insights from integrated information theory (IIT) and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT) … [read more]

♦  Schutter DJ, van Honk J. Extending the global workspace theory to emotion: phenomenality without access. Conscious Cogn. 2004 Sep;13(3):539-49. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.05.002. PMID: 15336246.

Recent accounts on the global workspace theory suggest that consciousness involves transient formations of functional connections in thalamo-cortico-cortical networks. The level of connectivity in these networks is argued to determine the state of … [read more]

♦  Sergent C, Dehaene S. Neural processes underlying conscious perception: experimental findings and a global neuronal workspace framework. J Physiol Paris. 2004 Jul-Nov;98(4-6):374-84. doi: 10.1016/j.jphysparis.2005.09.006. Epub 2005 Nov 15. PMID: 16293402.

One striking property of perception is that it can be achieved in two seemingly different ways: either consciously or non-consciously. What distinguishes these two types of processing at the neural level? So far, empirical findings suggest that conscious perception … [read more]

♦  Sergent C. The offline stream of conscious representations. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2018 Sep 19;373(1755):20170349. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0349. PMID: 30061463; PMCID: PMC6074088.

I will argue that it offers a coherent framework for explaining a great variety of observations in the domain of perception, sensory memory and working memory: the psychological refractory period, the attentional blink, post-dictive phenomena, iconic memory, latent working memory … [read more]

♦  Sergent C, Naccache L. Imaging neural signatures of consciousness: ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ does it work? Arch Ital Biol. 2012 Jun-Sep;150(2-3):91-106. doi: 10.4449/aib.v150i2.1270. PMID: 23165871.

‘What’ do we call consciousness? ‘When’ and ‘Where’ in the brain do conscious states occur, and ‘How’ conscious processing and conscious access to a given content work? In the present paper, we present a non-exhaustive overview of each of these 4 major issues, we provide … [read more]

♦  Seth AK, Bayne T. Theories of consciousness. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2022 Jul;23(7):439-452. doi: 10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4. Epub 2022 May 3. PMID: 35505255.

To clarify this complicated landscape, we review four prominent theoretical approaches to consciousness: higher-order theories, global workspace theories, re-entry and predictive processing theories and integrated information theory. We consider how some … [read more]

♦  Shanahan M, Baars B. Applying global workspace theory to the frame problem. Cognition. 2005 Dec;98(2):157-76. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.11.007. PMID: 16307957.

The challenge is to explain the capacity of so-called informationally unencapsulated cognitive processes to deal effectively with information from potentially any cognitive domain without the burden of having to explicitly sift the relevant from the irrelevant. The paper advocate … [read more]

♦  Shanahan M. A cognitive architecture that combines internal simulation with a global workspace. Conscious Cogn. 2006 Jun;15(2):433-49. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2005.11.005. Epub 2005 Dec 27. PMID: 16384715.

This paper proposes a brain-inspired cognitive architecture that incorporates approximations to the concepts of consciousness, imagination, and emotion. To emulate the empirically established cognitive efficacy of conscious as opposed to non-conscious information processing … [read more]

♦  Shanahan M. A spiking neuron model of cortical broadcast and competition. Conscious Cogn. 2008 Mar;17(1):288-303. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2006.12.005. Epub 2007 Feb 20. PMID: 17317220.

This paper presents a computer model of cortical broadcast and competition based on spiking neurons and inspired by the hypothesis of a global neuronal workspace underlying conscious information processing in the human brain. At the same time, the workspace … [read more]

♦  Shea N, Frith CD. The Global Workspace Needs Metacognition. Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Jul;23(7):560-571. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.04.007. Epub 2019 May 29. PMID: 31153773.

The two leading cognitive accounts of consciousness currently available concern global workspace (a form of working memory) and metacognition. There is relatively little interaction between these two approaches and it has even been suggested that the two … [read more]

♦  Shulman RG, Hyder F, Rothman DL. Cerebral metabolism and consciousness. C R Biol. 2003 Mar;326(3):253-73. doi: 10.1016/s1631-0691(03)00071-4. PMID: 12806834.

These quantitative biophysical relationships between energy consumption and neuronal activity provide novel insights into the nature of brain function. The high resting brain activity is proposed to include the global interactions constituting the subjective aspects of … [read more]

♦  Signorelli CM, Szczotka J, Prentner R. Explanatory profiles of models of consciousness – towards a systematic classification. Neurosci Conscious. 2021 Aug 27;2021(2):niab021. doi: 10.1093/nc/niab021. PMID: 34457353; PMCID: PMC8396118.

Models of consciousness aim to inspire new experimental protocols and aid interpretation of empirical evidence to reveal the structure of conscious experience. … [read more] 

♦  Silva S, Alacoque X, Fourcade O, Samii K, Marque P, Woods R, Mazziotta J, Chollet F, Loubinoux I. Wakefulness and loss of awareness: brain and brainstem interaction in the vegetative state. Neurology. 2010 Jan 26;74(4):313-20. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181cbcd96. PMID: 20101037; PMCID: PMC3462476.

Finally, ARAS whose activity was functionally correlated to that of the precuneus in controls was not in PVS. CONCLUSIONS: Global neuronal workspace theory predicts that damage to long-distance white matter tracts should impair access to conscious perception.  … [read more]

♦  Simione L, Raffone A, Wolters G, Salmas P, Nakatani C, Belardinelli MO, van Leeuwen C. ViSA: a neurodynamic model for visuo-spatial working memory, attentional blink, and conscious access. Psychol Rev. 2012 Oct;119(4):745-69. doi: 10.1037/a0029345. Epub 2012 Jul 23. Erratum in: Psychol Rev. 2012 Oct;119(4):769. PMID: 22823385.

Its flexible global workspace mechanisms enable a unitary account of a broad range of effects: It accounts for the limited storage capacity of visuo-spatial working memory, attentional cueing, and efficient selection with multi-object displays, as well as for the at … [read more]

♦  Smith R. A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self. Conscious Cogn. 2017 Feb;48:21-39. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.10.007. Epub 2016 Nov 1. PMID: 27810727.

To do this, I draw on empirical work regarding the neural basis of consciousness and decision-making, and on philosophical work regarding ecological control, unified group perspectives, and functional/mechanistic explanation. The work I review jointly supports the … [read more]

♦  Stanciu D. An ESR Framework for the Study of Consciousness. Entropy (Basel). 2021 Jan 11;23(1):97. doi: 10.3390/e23010097. PMID: 33440792; PMCID: PMC7826556.

This interdisciplinary approach would be in tune with Quine’s well known idea that philosophy is not simple conceptual analysis but is continuous with science and actually represents an abstract branch of the empirical research. The ESR could thus resonate with scientific models … [read more]

♦  Tagliazucchi E, Behrens M, Laufs H. Sleep neuroimaging and models of consciousness. Front Psychol. 2013 May 13;4:256. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00256. PMID: 23717291; PMCID: PMC3651967.

Given its ubiquity and reversible nature, it represents an attractive paradigm to study the neural changes which accompany the loss of consciousness in humans. In particular, the deepest stages of sleep can serve as an empirical test for the predictions of theoretical … [read more]

♦  Taylor JG. Mind and consciousness: Towards a final answer? Phys Life Rev. 2005 Mar;2(1):1-45. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2004.12.001. PMID: 22537904.

The review commences with a brief description of the nature of consciousness, and moves to an overview of various approaches presently being pursued to understand it (quantum mechanics, 40-Hz, dynamical systems theory and complexity, narrative centre of gravity, global … [read more]

♦  Van den Bussche E, Segers G, Reynvoet B. Conscious and unconscious proportion effects in masked priming. Conscious Cogn. 2008 Dec;17(4):1345-58. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2007.08.005. Epub 2007 Oct 4. PMID: 17919924.

The global neuronal workspace theory [Dehaene, S., & Naccache, L. (2001). Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework. Cognition, 79, 1-37.] proposes that it is impossible for an unconscious stimulus … [read more]

♦  van der Velde F. In Situ: Representations and Access Consciousness in Neural Blackboard or Workspace Architectures. Front Robot AI. 2018 Apr 3;5:32. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2018.00032. PMID: 33500918; PMCID: PMC7805760.

If so, the search for robot consciousness seems to be doomed. By contrast, theories of functional or access consciousness assert that consciousness can be studied only with forms of cognitive access, given by cognitive processes. Consequently, consciousness … [read more]

♦  VanRullen R, Kanai R. Deep learning and the Global Workspace Theory. Trends Neurosci. 2021 Sep;44(9):692-704. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2021.04.005. Epub 2021 May PMID: 34001376.

There is a growing need, however, for novel, brain-inspired cognitive architectures. The Global Workspace Theory (GWT) refers to a large-scale system integrating and distributing information among networks of specialized modules to create higher-level forms of … [read more]

♦  Vernet M, Quentin R, Japee S, Ungerleider LG. From visual awareness to consciousness without sensory input: The role of spontaneous brain activity. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 May-Jun;37(3-4):216-219. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1731442. Epub 2020 Feb 25. PMID: 32093525; PMCID: PMC7335319.

This manuscript is an invited commentary on the article “Toward a standard model of consciousness: Reconciling the attention schema, global workspace, higher-order thought, and illusionist theories”, by Drs. Finally, we describe elements that could be … [read more]

♦  Vitali H, Campus C, De Giorgis V, Signorini S, Gori M. The vision of dreams: from ontogeny to dream engineering in blindness. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022 Aug 1;18(8):2051-2062. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.10026. PMID: 35499135; PMCID: PMC9340600.

The involvement of frontoparietal regions in the dream-retrieval process allows us to discuss it in light of the Global Workspace theory of consciousness. However, dreaming in distinct sleep stages maintains relevant differences, suggesting that multiple … [read more]

♦  Volzhenin K, Changeux JP, Dumas G. Multilevel development of cognitive abilities in an artificial neural network. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Sep 27;119(39):e2201304119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2201304119. Epub 2022 Sep 19. PMID: 36122214; PMCID: PMC9522351.

The first sensorimotor level handles local nonconscious processing, here during a visual classification task. The second level or cognitive level globally integrates the information from multiple local processors via long-ranged connections and synthesizes it in a … [read more]

♦  Wallace RG, Wallace R. Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2009 Mar;18(1):160-7. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.12.002. Epub 2009 Jan 12. PMID: 19138864.

Evolution is littered with polyphyletic parallelism: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose consciousness embodies one such example, and represent it here with an equivalence class structure that factors the broad realm of necessary conditions information … [read more]

♦  Wallace R. A Global Workspace perspective on mental disorders. Theor Biol Med Model. 2005 Dec 21;2:49. doi: 10.1186/1742-4682-2-49. PMID: 16371149; PMCID: PMC1343591.

Recent developments in Global Workspace theory suggest that human consciousness can suffer interpenetrating dysfunctions of mutual and reciprocal interaction with embedding environments which will have early onset and often insidious staged … [read more]

♦  Wallace R. Culture and inattentional blindness: a global workspace perspective. J Theor Biol. 2007 Mar 21;245(2):378-90. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.10.006. Epub 2006 Oct 12. PMID: 17109895.

A recent ‘necessary conditions’ mathematical treatment of Baars’ global workspace consciousness model, analogous to Dretske’s communication theory analysis of high level mental function, is used to explore the effects of embedding cultural heritage on … [read more]

♦  Wallach W, Franklin S, Allen C. A conceptual and computational model of moral decision making in human and artificial agents. Top Cogn Sci. 2010 Jul;2(3):454-85. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01095.x. Epub 2010 May 13. PMID: 25163872.

Global workspace theory, proposed by the neuropsychologist Bernard Baars (1988), is a highly regarded model of human cognition that is currently being computationally instantiated in several software implementations. LIDA (Franklin, Baars, Ramamurthy, & Ventura … [read more]

♦  Walter N, Hinterberger T. Self-organized criticality as a framework for consciousness: A review study. Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 15;13:911620. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911620. PMID: 35911009; PMCID: PMC9336647.

A comprehensive search of publications on consciousness and SOC published between 1998 and 2021 was conducted. Recent studies pointed out agreements of critical dynamics with the current most influencing theories in the field of consciousness … [read more]

♦  Wessel JR. Error awareness and the error-related negativity: evaluating the first decade of evidence. Front Hum Neurosci. 2012 Apr 17;6:88. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00088. PMID: 22529791; PMCID: PMC3328124.

Based on the review of these results, I will then try to embed the error-related negativity into a widely known model of the implementation of access consciousness in the brain, the global neuronal workspace (GNW) model, and speculate as the ERN’s potential … [read more]

♦  Whyte CJ. Integrating the global neuronal workspace into the framework of predictive processing: Towards a working hypothesis. Conscious Cogn. 2019 Aug;73:102763. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.102763. Epub 2019 Jun 19. PMID: 31228697.

Hohwy (2013) proposed an account of conscious access that integrates the global neuronal workspace (GNW) into the framework of predictive processing, a view that I term the predictive global neuronal workspace (PGNW). The aim of this article is to … [read more]

♦  Whyte CJ, Smith R. The predictive global neuronal workspace: A formal active inference model of visual consciousness. Prog Neurobiol. 2021 Apr;199:101918. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2020.101918. Epub 2020 Oct 8. PMID: 33039416.

The global neuronal workspace (GNW) model has inspired over two decades of hypothesis-driven research on the neural basis of consciousness. In this paper we present a neurocomputational model – based on Active Inference – that captures central … [read more]

♦  Whyte CJ, Hohwy J, Smith R. An active inference model of conscious access: How cognitive action selection reconciles the results of report and no-report paradigms. Curr Res Neurobiol. 2022 Apr 1;3:100036. doi: 10.1016/j.crneur.2022.100036. PMID: 36304590; PMCID: PMC9593308.

Cognitive theories of consciousness, such as global workspace theory and higher-order theories, posit that frontoparietal circuits play a crucial role in conscious access. Therefore, our simulations show that evidence provided by no-report paradigms does … [read more]

♦  Windey B, Vermeiren A, Atas A, Cleeremans A. The graded and dichotomous nature of visual awareness. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2014 Mar 17;369(1641):20130282. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0282. PMID: 24639587; PMCID: PMC3965170.

Such issues have recently been the object of intense debate because different theoretical frameworks make different predictions about the graded versus dichotomous character of consciousness. Here, we review both relevant empirical findings as well as the associated theories … [read more]

♦  Winters JJ. The temporally-integrated causality landscape: A theoretical framework for consciousness and meaning. Conscious Cogn. 2020 Aug;83:102976. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102976. Epub 2020 Jun 23. PMID: 32590193.

Theoretical approaches to understanding consciousness have begun to converge upon areas of general agreement, yet substantive differences remain. Here, I introduce a new theoretical framework for the emergence of consciousness from the functional integration of the … [read more]

♦  Winters JJ. The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness. Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Nov 4;15:768459. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.768459. PMID: 34803643; PMCID: PMC8599361.

I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General … [read more]

♦  Witon A, Shirazibehehsti A, Cooke J, Aviles A, Adapa R, Menon DK, Chennu S, Bekinschtein T, Lopez JD, Litvak V, Li L, Friston K, Bowman H. Sedation Modulates Frontotemporal Predictive Coding Circuits and the Double Surprise Acceleration Effect. Cereb Cortex. 2020 Sep 3;30(10):5204-5217. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa071. PMID: 32427284; PMCID: PMC7472187.

Two important theories in cognitive neuroscience are predictive coding (PC) and the global workspace (GW) theory. A key research task is to understand how these two theories relate to one another, and particularly, how the brain transitions from a predictive early … [read more]

♦ Yeung AWK, Cushing CA, Lee ALF. A bibliometric evaluation of the impact of theories of consciousness in academia and on social media. Conscious Cogn. 2022 Apr;100:103296. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103296. Epub 2022 Mar 2. PMID: 35247728.

Consciousness science has faced both opportunities and challenges in recent years. To objectively evaluate the state of consciousness science as a field, we analyzed bibliometric data for five major theories of consciousness: Global workspace … [read more]

♦  Yoshimi J, Vinson DW. Extending Gurwitsch’s field theory of consciousness. Conscious Cogn. 2015 Jul;34:104-23. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.03.017. Epub 2015 Apr 27. PMID: 25916764.

Aron Gurwitsch’s theory of the structure and dynamics of consciousness has much to offer contemporary theorizing about consciousness and its basis in the embodied brain. On Gurwitsch’s account, as we develop it, the field of consciousness has a variable sized … [read more]

♦  Zilio F, Lavazza A. Consciousness in a Rotor? Science and Ethics of Potentially Conscious Human Cerebral Organoids. AJOB Neurosci. 2023 Feb 15:1-19. doi: 10.1080/21507740.2023.2173329. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36794285.

This raises the question of whether cerebral organoids will also be able to develop the unique feature of the human brain, consciousness. If this is the case, some ethical issues would arise. In this article, we discuss the necessary neural correlates and constraints for … [read more]