APA Dictionary of Psychology

a variation of global workspace theory: a proposed cognitive architecture in which long-distance neurons connect multiple specialized processors into a neural computational space, synchronizing their individual signals and distributing them to the brain as a whole to produce a global transmission of information that is experienced as consciousness. According to the model, workspace neurons can sustain only a single global representation at a time, making the transition to consciousness an all-or-none occurrence that depends on attention: Neural activity must be robust and focused enough to trigger the large-scale and self-sustained synchronicity that elevates processing from subliminal to reportable. Although distributed throughout the brain, long-distance workspace neurons are particularly dense in the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and parietal cortex. [developed by French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (1965–  ), French neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux (1936–  ), French neurologist Lionel Naccache (1969–  ), and colleagues]