Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and Prefrontal Cortex: Recent developments

Some excerpts:

"Here we aim to clarify some empirical questions that have been raised, and review evidence that the prefrontal and posterior regions support dynamic global workspace functions, in agreement with several other authors. Static, gross anatomical divisions are superseded by the dynamical connectome of cortex."

"GW dynamics suggests that conscious experiences reflect a flexible 'binding and broadcasting' function in the brain, which is able to mobilize a large, distributed collection of specialized cortical networks and processes that are not conscious by themselves."

"Many conscious events are both sensory and semantic. For example, a word in this sentence has sensory properties, but it carries meaning in precisely the same event. Words that are effortful to read and understand also activate the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. Words that involve visual motor actions like playing tennis, also recruit motor regions of the cortex."

"Some authors seem to restrict the term 'consciousness' to sensory events (Raccah et al, 2021). This is an overly narrow definition that excludes numerous conscious experiences, such as feelings of effort, interoceptive emotional feelings, conscious beliefs and ideas, endogenous visual imagery, and inner speech."

"We believe that human conscious cognition inherently allows for both conscious thought about the conscious stream, as well as unconscious comments on the conscious stream.[...] The GW concept, in itself, enables metacognitive processes from unconscious onlooking systems viewing the conscious flow in the global workspace. GWT suggests the plausibility of both conscious and unconscious metacognition. [...] Conscious metacognition, in which humans consciously think about their own conscious experiences — editing a text like this is one obvious example. Unconscious metacognition, where Unconscious specialized processors monitor the conscious global workspace to interrupt the conscious flow, or otherwise intervene if the unconscious 'critic' detects a serious problem."

"There are conscious experiences that minimize metacognition, namely absorbed experiences, as in the case of 'flow' experiences and any other total involvement with a dense flow of events. After an absorbed state, it is generally difficult for people to remember metacognitive judgments from the absorbed state (Csikszentmihalyi et al, 2017). It seems as if 'deep absorption' minimizes the capacity for conscious metacognition, which makes sense in light of the limited capacity constraint. Absorption may drive out conscious metacognition. It is hard to reflect about inaccessible contents that occurred during absorption. However, during absorption it is entirely possible that unconscious metacognition continues, which would be suggested by our ability during absorption to be interrupted by an unexpected fire alarm, presumably detected unconsciously."