Consciousness and the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene

"Global workspace theory
My colleagues and I introduced the theory of a Global Neuronal Workspace
(GNW) as a putative neurobiological architecture capable of accounting
for cognitive and neuroscience observations on unconscious and
conscious processing (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001)......   ....The hypothetical neurobiological mechanism for global availability is a set of large cortical pyramidal cells with long-range excitatory axons (GNW neurons), together with their relevant thalamo-cortical loops. These cells are present throughout the human cortex, yet they are particularly dense in prefrontal, cingulate, and parietal regions. They form a long-distance network that interconnects associative cortical areas and allows them to flexibly recruit, in a top-down manner, virtually any specialized area. Through their numerous reciprocal connections, GNW neurons are thought to amplify and maintain a specific neural representation for an arbitrary duration, thus keeping it “on line” or “in mind”
above from
Neurosciences and the Human Person: New Perspectives on Human Activities Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 121, Vatican City 2013


See also
Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts By Stanislas Dehaene





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