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Consciousness is a fundamental scientific question of life.
Elucidating its biological and psychological bases could therefore pave the way for major breakthroughs in basic science and clinical medicine. Also, such an understanding would have profound implications for philosophy, and for our own relationships with other people and with animals.
Far from being some free-floating cloud around our heads, sensory consciousness is profoundly embedded in biology, anatomy, physiology, and above all, in adaptive functions that serve us in every waking second of life. This is not some philosophical speculation. It is now supported by numerous findings published in peer-reviewed journals that are easily found on the web.
We think of the brain in terms of geographical regions, but the cerebral cortex works as a whole. This viewpoint is the basis for decades of cognitive neuroscience research, writing, and what we discuss and explore here.
I teach science. It keeps me out of trouble.
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Together, we will gain a deeper understanding of some of the most definitive evidence in medical science about cortical connectivity and the complexities of the living brain.
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As one of the founders of the modern science of consciousness in the 80s, I’ve mostly dedicated my scientific work outside of academia, and I want to thank you for supporting, what I hope, is a continuum of excellent science communication here.
Who is Bernard Baars?
A Distinguished Senior Fellow of FAU’s Center for the Future Mind, Bernard Baars is an acclaimed author in psychobiology, best known as the originator of Global Workspace Theory (GWT) - a well known and widely used theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex, and consciousness. GWT is a widely used framework for the role of conscious and unconscious events in the functioning of the brain, a set of explicit assumptions that can be tested, as many of them have been in the last twenty years. Global Workspace Dynamics (GWD) is its most current version – attempting to take into account the complexities of the living brain.
Dr. Baars is the recipient of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by the International Neural Network Society (INNS), which recognizes outstanding individuals whose scientific life contribution to the field of neural networks was proven to be paradigm changing and long lasting.
He worked with Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman for more than a decade as a Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA. A cognitive scientist by training, Baars became deeply committed to understanding the fundamental questions of consciousness, volition, and self.
His many books include his latest 2019 publication, On Consciousness: Science & Subjectivity - Updated Works on Global Workspace Theory; A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness; The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology; In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind; Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience (1st & 2nd Editions); Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience (1st & 2nd Editions); Experimental Slips and Human Error: Exploring the Architecture of Volition; Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics, among others. He has published over 160 scientific papers, chapters, essays, and articles in esteemed science journals, with over 25,000 citations to date [GoogleScholar]. Baars has also published on animal consciousness, volition, and feelings of knowing, and an approach to “higher” states, as defined in the meditation traditions, since new brain recording methods continue to reveal unexpected evidence on those topics.
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