Toward a computational theory of conscious processing

By Stanislas Dehaene, Lucie Charles, Jean-Remi King, Sébastien Marti. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2013

365 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The study of the mechanisms of conscious processing has become a productive area of cognitive neuroscience. Here we review some of the recent behavioral and neuroscience data, with the specific goal of constraining present and future theories of the computations underlying conscious processing. Experimental findings imply that most of the brain’s computations can be performed in a non-conscious mode, but that conscious perception is characterized by an amplification, global propagation and integration of brain signals. A comparison of these data with major theoretical proposals suggests that firstly, conscious access must be carefully distinguished from selective attention; secondly, conscious perception may be likened to a non-linear decision that ‘ignites’ a network of distributed areas; thirdly, information which is selected for conscious perception gains access to additional computations, including temporary maintenance, global sharing, and flexible routing; and finally, measures of the complexity, long-distance correlation and integration of brain signals provide reliable indices of conscious processing, clinically relevant to patients recovering from coma.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Epidemiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ccf8ae760b9e5f7eab51fade036c271d8a727c79

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Epidemiology

Citations in the corpus

Insects have the capacity for subjective experience (2016, background): “Conscious processing is dependent on at least two non-mutually exclusive processes: signal amplification and global integration across the surface of the cerebral cortex (Dehaene et al., 2014; Pritchett et al., 2015).”
Signature of consciousness in the dynamics of resting-state brain activity (2015, result): “This finding also fits with the Global Neuronal Workspace theory (22), according to which the “ignition” of a global neural state coding for a particularly conscious content leads to the active inhibition of other potential contents (37) and therefore induces a central bottleneck in dual-task proces”
From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind (2016, background): “…for consciousness (Barrett and Simmons 2015, p. 425) According to EPIC, bodily predictions act as a binding ‘pacemaker’ signal to create a core neuronal workspace synchronizing cortical representations to give rise to embod-ied, conscious awareness (Allen et al. 2016a; Dehaene et al. 2014).”
Why fish do not feel pain (2016, background): “Conscious processing is dependent on at least two non-mutually exclusive processes: signal amplification and global integration across the surface of the cerebral cortex (Dehaene et al., 2014; Pritchett et al., 2015).”