Thinking about the global neural workspace:
As described by Stanislas Dehaene, the global neural workspace can only hold one thought at a time even if this thought is complex. Its role is to broadcast this thought to a number of brain locations, no matter in which part of the brain the thought was pre-consciously formed.
As there can be only one thought at a time, it seems like the next replaces entirely the previous one. In some cases, there is even attentional blindness window: bringing something to consciousness causes us to miss the following cue.
The role of the global neural network is also to spin together the different inputs we received into a coherent thought. Contrary to the unconscious and pre-conscious level, it can hold thoughts for longer. I can also retrieve thoughts from memory.
The architecture is based on a series of loop: loop from sensory system to higher brain function and back (the back feeding being as important if not more than the forward feeding), and the global neural network as an over-arching loop.
The role of the back-feeding is to consolidate the perception into one percept, selecting one (the most likely) among the number of possible interpretations based on previous experience.
So the role of the global neural network is really linking different information together to make a whole, complete story: linking different sensory inputs together, linking sensory inputs to memories or patterns produced by past inputs, and why not linking thoughts together in an over-arching story.
We know that it’s easier to remember items that are linked together in some way rather than random elements. Or that we can better remember random elements if we build a sentence or a story.
Semantic memory involves frontal cortex (different from body memory).
The image I have of the global neural network is the “tricotin” a tool to knit yawn into a tube. Except this “tricotin” would take not only one thread as input, but multiple threads, including the one it is producing, looping back on itself: human capacity for meta-cognition.
How is it possible to loop back: thanks to semantic. Encoding of memories into words rather than bare sensory inputs allows us to store them and manipulate memories differently.
When the brain/body re-experiences a sensory memory, it can’t reflect at the same time on it. See PTSD for the extreme case.
Why? because it re-engages all sensory systems, and these coalitions of neurons are too powerful and win over the battle for the domination of the global neural workspace.
Semantic memories are different: they don’t (or more rarely, less deeply) engage the sensory systems (despite the best efforts of Proust to describe its madeleine, it’s never as powerful as the taste in evoking the memory).
So semantic memories and current pre-conscious thoughts can be knitted together more effectively, producing the self-reflection.
Thus, consciousness, as in the global neural network, constantly spins the tale of our inner life, sometimes doubling back on itself, sometimes jumping from one place to another in an apparently nonsensical way, depending on the winning coalition of neurons at the time.
This doesn’t solve the question of how winning coalitions are formed, or defeated, and if the consciousness itself has any influence on them, and if yes, to what extent. I would bet quite a bit: see auto-hypnosis, or simple hypnosis: modified state of consciousness, that manages to recruit enough neurons to place the subject in almost an alternate / virtual reality, or not to experience pain during surgery. Which it doesn’t mean that it’s easy, it would on the contrary require a lot of training. Link to meditation, and other mind practice (included in Tai Chi)
The tale we spin seems to be tainted by a moderate optimism in healthy subject. Studies have shown that if we saw reality as it is, we would be mildly depressed.
This might be related Damasio’s principle of homeostasis. Moderate optimism has been selected as benefiting the organism or the species as a whole.
This is related to our capacity to assess our self. If we were to assess our self accurately, we would likely be more stressed which does damage to the body. So a mild delusion protect us from too much stress, and consequently too much degradation in our body.
Lack of self-awareness (animals) means no need for delusion / optimism. See Buddhism: seeing the ego as an illusion, discarding illusions born from our ego: the tales our global neural network spins about the world and itself, so it feels good (in a constant research of homeostasis, as understood and described by Damasio: not simply the balance, but the research of a surplus).
See Tchouang-tseu or Noah Yuval Harari, and how the concepts (justice, etc) and ideologies (from religion to humanism) push us further away from reality.
What was meant as tools to promote homeostasis for the subject and their local groups, turned against the species (and the planet). We have such a capacity to deceive ourselves to ensure that we feel good. We started taking ideas for reality, and then got attached to them more than to real beings (test form Harari: does it suffer?). We became incapable of seeing past these ideas to the underlying reality that first supported them. When they became inadequate (because reality is always changing), instead of going back in touch with reality, humans spin another tale on top of the first, and so on.
We’re so far gone, so far detached from what is, that we are totally incapable of going back. Generations of tales are imprinted in our brains, through genes and epigenetics, through environment (embodied tales), education, social order.
Thinking of the Tai Chi master who is watching only animal documentaries on TV.
These tales are only tales, but they have real impacts on beings. We (just) need to see them for what they are, and be willing to discard or re-think them when they do more bad than good (in terms of suffering for all beings). Detaching ourselves from the tales is difficult, because we spun them into our own tale of self. Discarding this tale is the most difficult ever, because it’s the basic tool of our survival, the latest evolution strategy in humans, to achieve homeostasis.
Our capacity to spin tales also explain why it’s so difficult to convince someone who has a strong opinion. Preserving their self is more important than reality. Even if sometimes, continuing to believe in such a tale endangers them: see all cults, and in particular Trump supporters doubling down.
The only thing that could convince them is if they manage to see the tale crumbling down, and they have another tale, more flattering, to latch on to. The tale of the cult survivor for example, the hero for freedom, the whistleblower. We need to give them / plant a story of redemption, a story of change and success.
(Just understood how powerful the christian message can be, thanks to promise of redemption, because it gives anyone a valid, positive exit from one tale with entrance / buy-in into another).