A recent publication in Nature (Cogitate et al. 2025) aimed at enriching the progressive build-up of a valid theory of conscious processing using valuable multicentric experimentation and massive data-sharing open to new analyses (Bryant and Whyte 2025). It is important to stress that several of the analyses reported in this Nature article validate key predictions of the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) including (i) transient ignition following stimulus onset in the predicted time-window (200-800 ms), (ii) irrespective of stimulus duration and (...) (iii) of stimulus relevance, as well as (iv) decoding of “conscious content in visual, ventrotemporal and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses […] and content specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas.” In other words, this article confirmed that stimuli that are clearly consciously visible elicit a brain-wide activation and synchronization between sensory areas and prefrontal cortex, even in the absence of task relevance, validating a non-trivial prediction of the GNWT. Also, given that this study only used clearly visible stimuli, it could not test the most central predictions of the GNWT, which tackle the critical contrast between conscious and non-conscious processing. Hence, several conclusions drawn by the authors about GNWT predictions need to be reconsidered. (shrink)

In recent years increasing attention has been given to systematic comparison of theories of consciousness. Laudable practical projects have emerged in this regard, such as adversarial collaboration and the development of databases lending themselves to comparisons of empirical support for theories. In addition to the practical advances, theoretical advances have been made, such as a list of issues a theory of consciousness must address. We propose adding the issue of the ontogenetic emergence (O-emergence) of consciousness to the list of issues (...) we use to evaluate theories of consciousness. O-emergence concerns how and when consciousness emerges ontogenetically in human beings. The underlying assumption is that there exists a point in the development of a human individual before which that individual is not and cannot be conscious. This assumption, in turn, depends on a widely shared assumption of cognitive neuroscience, which is that consciousness somehow depends on — or derives from — brain activity. In this paper, we lay out the O-emergence criterion and investigate whether it can be accounted for within the Global Neuronal Workspace theory, the Self-Organizing Meta-representational Account, and the Reorganization of Elementary Functions framework. (shrink)

The following interview explores neuroscientist Christof Koch's participation in the adversarial collaboration, testing the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness against the global neuronal workspace theory (GNW). The interview offers a current update on the adversarial project and then pivots to Koch's responses to three standing critiques of IIT, which include the inexactness of IIT's measures of the neural correlates of consciousness, the charge that IIT implies an unwieldy panpsychism, and the claim that IIT conflates its measures with consciousness.

A new strategy for moving forward in the characterization of the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) is proposed. According to Dehaene, Changeux and colleagues, broadcasting is the main function of the GNW. However, the dynamic network properties described by recent graph-theoretic GNW models are consistent with many large-scale communication processes that are different from broadcasting. We propose to apply a different graph-theoretic approach, originally developed for optimizing information dissemination in communication networks, which can be used to identify the pattern of frequency (...) and phase-specific directed functional connections that the GNW would exhibit only if it were a broadcasting network. (shrink)

This paper analyses the potential neoliberal biases found in one of the most influential theories of consciousness in contemporary neuroscience, the Global Neuronal Workspace hypothesis (GNW). Philosopher Catherine Malabou argues that there is a mirroring between managerial discourse and that of contemporary neurobiology. Surprisingly, there is scant linguistic work on the ideological form of neurobiological discourse. In response, I empirically evaluate a specific aspect of Malabou’s claim by using Michael Halliday’s concept of grammatical metaphor to interrogate the particular form of (...) subjectivity implied by the rhetorical and lexicogrammatical construction of the GNW as a concept. This analysis shows that a particular form of grammatical metaphor, dubbed “circumstantial grammatical metaphor” is key to the construction of the GNW and blurs the distinction between the model and the materiality it models. These grammatical metaphors also appear to be involved in the production of broader conceptual metaphors. The results indicate there is evidence for correlations with what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello call “the new spirit of capitalism” helping naturalise a reduced form of subjectivity. (shrink)