A Global Workspace perspective on mental disorders

Excitation-inhibition balance and auditory multistable perception are correlated with autistic traits and schizotypy in a non-clinical population

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder and individuals with schizophrenia have impaired social and communication skills. They also have altered auditory perception. This study investigated autistic traits and schizotypy in a non-clinical population as well as the excitation-inhibition (EI) balance in different brain regions and their auditory multistable perception. Thirty-four healthy participants were assessed by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). The EI balance was evaluated by measuring the resting-state concentrations of glutamate-glutamine (Glx) and ϒ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in vivo by using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. To observe the correlation between their traits and perception, we conducted an auditory streaming task and a verbal transformation task, in which participants reported spontaneous perceptual switching while listening to a sound sequence. Their AQ and SPQ scores were positively correlated with the Glx/GABA ratio in the auditory cortex but not in the frontal areas. These scores were negatively correlated with the number of perceptual switches in the verbal transformation task but not in the auditory streaming task. Our results suggest that the EI balance in the auditory cortex and the perceptual formation of speech are involved in autistic traits and schizotypy.

Pathologies in functional connectivity, feedback control and robustness: a global workspace perspective on autism spectrum disorders

We study the background to problems of functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorders within the neurocognitive framework of the global workspace model. This we proceed to do by observing network irregularities detracting from that of a well-formed small world network architecture. This is discussed in terms of pathologies in functional connectivity and lack of central coherence disrupting inter-network communication thus impairing effective cognitive action. A typical coherence-connectivity measure as a by-product of various neuroimaging results is considered. This is related to a model of feedback control in which a coherence function in the frequency domain is modified by an environmentally determined interaction parameter. With respect to the latter, we discuss the stability question that in theory may counterbalance inessential metabolic costs and incoherence of processing. We suggest that factors such as local overconnectivity and global underconnectivity, along with acute over-expenditure of metabolic costs give rise to instability within the connective core of the workspace.

The limits of collaboration: a qualitative study of community ethical review of environmental health research

OBJECTIVES

We assessed the effectiveness of various systems of community participation in ethical review of environmental health research.

METHODS

We used situation analysis methods and a global workspace theoretical framework to conduct comparative case studies of 3 research organizations at 1 medical center.

RESULTS

We found a general institutional commitment to community review as well as personal commitment from some participants in the process. However, difficulty in communicating across divides of knowledge and privilege created serious gaps in implementation, leaving research vulnerable to validity threats (such as misinterpretation of findings) and communities vulnerable to harm. The methods used in each collaboration solved some, but not all, of the problems that hindered communication.

CONCLUSIONS

Researchers, community spokespersons, and institutional review boards constitute organizational groups with strong internal ties and highly developed cultures. Few cross-linkages and little knowledge of each other cause significant distortion of information and other forms of miscommunication between groups. Our data suggest that organizations designed to protect human volunteers are in the best position to take the lead in implementing community review.

Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness

Evolution is littered with polyphyletic parallelism: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose consciousness embodies one such example, and represent it here with an equivalence class structure that factors the broad realm of necessary conditions information theoretic realizations of Baars' global workspace model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, highly tunable, and even simultaneous temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. The variety of possibilities suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations--bush phylogenies of consciousness pruned by selection and chance extinction. Although few traces of the radiations may be found in the fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind.

Culture and inattentional blindness: a global workspace perspective

A recent 'necessary conditions' mathematical treatment of Baars' global workspace consciousness model, analogous to Dretske's communication theory analysis of high level mental function, is used to explore the effects of embedding cultural heritage on inattentional blindness. Culture should express itself quite distinctly in this basic psychophysical phenomenon across a great variety of sensory modalities because the limited syntactic and grammatical bandpass of the rate distortion manifold characterizing conscious attention must conform to topological constraints generated by cultural context.

Collective consciousness and its pathologies: understanding the failure of AIDS control and treatment in the United States

We address themes of distributed cognition by extending recent formal developments in the theory of individual consciousness. While single minds appear biologically limited to one dynamic structure of linked cognitive submodules instantiating consciousness, organizations, by contrast, can support several, sometimes many, such constructs simultaneously, although these usually operate relatively slowly. System behavior remains, however, constrained not only by culture, but by a developmental path dependence generated by organizational history, in the context of market selection pressures. Such highly parallel multitasking – essentially an institutional collective consciousness – while capable of reducing inattentional blindness and the consequences of failures within individual workspaces, does not eliminate them, and introduces new characteristic malfunctions involving the distortion of information sent between workspaces and the possibility of pathological resilience – dysfunctional institutional lock-in. Consequently, organizations remain subject to canonical and idiosyncratic failures analogous to, but more complicated than, those afflicting individuals. Remediation is made difficult by the manner in which pathological externalities can write images of themselves onto both institutional function and corrective intervention. The perspective is applied to the failure of AIDS control and treatment in the United States.

Metastability, criticality and phase transitions in brain and its models

This survey of experimental findings and theoretical insights of the past 25 years places the brain firmly into the conceptual framework of nonlinear dynamics, operating at the brink of criticality, which is achieved and maintained by self-organization. It is here the basis for proposing that the application of the twin concepts of scaling and universality of the theory of non-equilibrium phase transitions can serve as an informative approach for elucidating the nature of underlying neural-mechanisms, with emphasis on the dynamics of recursively reentrant activity flow in intracortical and cortico-subcortical neuronal loops.