http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/a...s-are-you/
EXCERPT: [...] Using these techniques, Prof. Dehaene and colleagues found that when a participant becomes able to report, say, seeing a word, they can suddenly do a wide range of new things with the information, including naming and remembering it. This seems to be because information is suddenly shared throughout the brain. When a participant becomes consciously aware of something, the initial neural response is amplified many-fold, and suddenly spreads, as synchronised activity, through a wide network of regions, including many parts of the cortex. Prof. Dehaene calls this the Global Neuronal Workspace....
EXCERPT: [...] Using these techniques, Prof. Dehaene and colleagues found that when a participant becomes able to report, say, seeing a word, they can suddenly do a wide range of new things with the information, including naming and remembering it. This seems to be because information is suddenly shared throughout the brain. When a participant becomes consciously aware of something, the initial neural response is amplified many-fold, and suddenly spreads, as synchronised activity, through a wide network of regions, including many parts of the cortex. Prof. Dehaene calls this the Global Neuronal Workspace....