concept

Global Workspace Theory (GWT)

A theory of consciousness proposed by Bernard Baars and developed by Stanislas Dehaene, viewing consciousness through cognitive architecture. The brain holds many specialized processors running unconsciously (vision, memory, motor control...); consciousness arises only when information from one processor is selected and *broadcast* to a wide "workspace" that all the other processors can access at once. Dehaene calls the neural signature of that broadcast "ignition" - a sudden burst of synchronized electrical activity sweeping across distant brain regions. Without a global workspace and the capacity for such ignition, a network is merely a collection of isolated, unconscious parallel routines.