Combining the Global Neuronal Workspace theory of consciousness with the Predictive Coding Theory: prospects and challenges from the clinical cognitive neuroscience.

Within the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) framework, Lucie Berkovitch and colleagues have made the hypothesis that the dissociation between impaired conscious access and intact unconscious processing observed in patients with schizophrenia is due to a specific disruption of top-down attentional amplification. Confronting their GNW model of schizophrenia with some Bayesian models, the authors encourage to combine the GNW theory of conscious access with the Predictive Coding Theory (PCT), but with the caveat that the relation between conscious access and Bayesian hierarchical modeling has yet to be made explicit and clear. In this paper we take up the challenge and sketch a possible integration of GNW and PCT. We then highlight the critical points raised by the case of schizophrenia, with a brief focus on the case of delusions. This provides some directions along which we can continue a work of integration that can play a decisive role in clinical cognitive neuroscience.