After designing and conducting a series of experiments that used brain imaging to study visual perception, Baars introduced the theory of the global workspace in 1988.2 According to this theory, consciousness involves the widespread dissemination, or broadcasting, of previously unconscious (preconscious) information throughout the cortex. Baars suggested that the global workspace comprises a system of neural circuits that extends from the brain stem to the thalamus and from there to the cerebral cortex.
