#10 — Global Workspace Theory (GWT) - Brain Aspects and Evidence w/ Dr Jay Giedd | On Consciousness

In the third part of their roundtable talk, neuroscientist David Edelman, Bernard Baars, originator of the global workspace theory and global workspace dynamics, and developmental neuropsychiatrist Jay Giedd consider underlying neural processes and anatomical features of Global Workspace Theory and continue on their journey to unravel the complexities surrounding conscious experiences.

How does consciousness come together in the brain? How does memory figure into conscious experience? Knowing how we acquire coherent perceptual insights about the world and then commit those insights to memory, can we tune the learning process to optimize the acquisition of new skills?

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Talking Points:

0:00 – Intro
2:09 – Key Points of the Global Workspace Theory
7:41 – Has GWT Been Misinterpreted?
9:11 – Is Consciousness a Byproduct of Biology?
11:09 – Importance of the GWT
12:41 – The Limitless Potential of the Human Brain
15:36 – Diminishing Human Skills
18:02 – What Creates a Conscious Experience?
21:26 – Brain Areas Associated with Consciousness
26:24 – Limitations of Brain Scanners

Summary of the Conversation:

In this engrossing episode of ‘On Consciousness,' Bernard Baars, David Edelman, and developmental neuropsychiatrist Jay Giedd consider GWT and its underlying neural processes and anatomical features, as well as the development of the imaging technology which has afforded a detailed view of brain activity in near-real time that appears to support GWT.

To begin the discussion, Bernie provides an outline of GWT. He points to the paradox that our thought processes seem to unfold serially, yet the brain architecture underlying those thought processes resembles a collection of massively parallel processors. With this insight in mind, Bernie proposed a Global Workspace in which nonconscious processes arising in different neural regions come together, those processes are somehow polled, and the most ‘popular’ among them gets broadcast throughout the cerebral cortex, amounting to a sort of ‘ignition’ of conscious experience.

From Bernie’s summary of GWT, the discussion turns to perceptual learning. As humans negotiating an incredibly complex world, one of our greatest advantages is a long maturation period that affords us the time to acquire many sophisticated skills. Given time, a rich suite of sensory faculties, a large brain, and a good understanding of the neural processes underlying learning and memory, can we somehow optimize the acquisition of specialized skills? Elaborating on this, Jay proposes the prospect of replacing native skills that are losing ground to technology with new ones — sophisticated pattern recognition being just one example. Human beings are still much better at pattern recognition than the most powerful supercomputers.

Central to conscious perception is the ability of the brain to bind perceptual input from different sensory organs into cohesive, unified percepts that somehow hold together and persist in memory. Jay observes that during development, there must be an accretive weaving together of percepts which at some point passes a threshold of complexity, yielding conscious experience. But, when do developing humans and some non-human animals cross this rubicon of awareness? New imaging techniques, including fMRI and MEG, have made it possible for researchers to record some of the functional signatures of integration of percepts. Someday, using improved versions of such techniques, we increasingly observe the emergence of complex states of consciousness in human infants and young non-human animals.

At the close of the discussion, Bernie, Jay, and David reflect on the work of Wilder Penfield, whose contributions included the identification of numerous brain regions with particular functional specializations and the seminal insight that the cerebral cortex is the organ of mind. The pioneering refinements in open skull surgery which made possible these contributions also led Penfield to observe that variations in blood coloration associated with changes in flow were strongly correlated with differences in brain area activation. In a sense, as Jay remarks, Penfield’s observation presaged the development of fMRI. Tempering the promise of neuroimaging, Jay and David conclude the conversation by pondering the shortcomings of fMRI, including limits on spatial and temporal resolution, extreme computational processing (which can lead to ‘data massaging’), and the danger of overinterpreting results.

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