Stanislas Dehaene

Chaire Psychologie cognitive expérimentale

Année 2025-2026

Collège de France

Colloque : Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain

Theme: Perception and Consciousness

The Global Neuronal Workspace from the Molecular to the Cognitive Level: Consequences for Pathology and Pharmacology

Colloque - Jean-Pierre Changeux : The Global Neuronal Workspace from the Molecular to the Cognitive Level: Consequences for Pathology and Pharmacology

Jean-Pierre Changeux

Résumé

The global neuronal workspace (GNW) theory originates from decades-long productive dialogs between Dehaene & Changeux which aimed, in the late 80's, at the elaboration of formal neuronal networks of cognitive functions. They initially included birdsong learning by selection, the Wisconsin card sorting task, infants numerosity detection...All these models were grounded on a molecular level which included allosteric neurotransmitter receptors. In 1998, the "global neuronal workspace" was integrated into a formal organism in order to pass the effort-full, "conscious", Stroop task. It was postulated to consist of a brain-scale—multimodal & horizontal—network of widely distributed neurons with long axon neurons, distinct from modality-specific localized non-conscious processors, including neurons which included the prefontal, parieto-temporal, cingulate… areas. The access of an outside representation to the conscious workspace would manifest itself by an "ignition" of the workspace network. At this stage, an important number of imaging and electrophysiological data appear consistent with the GNW theory. In this contribution, emphasis shall be given to the bottomup contribution of the molecular level and its consequences for the understanding of neuropsychiatric diseases and rational drug design, in the larger context of a novel precision pharmacology.