"an argument is advanced for its likely emergence within the sort of small-world brain network seemingly favoured by evolution." "Third, it has been shown that cortical wiring in mammals exhibits the properties of a small-world network" "According to Striedter (2005), this is the consequence of evolutionary pressure to maintain communication between anatomically segregated regions in the face of an increasing neuron count, since this cannot go hand-in-hand with a proportional increase in connectivity" "this article proposes that the long-range white matter connections that serve to keep down the average path length in large-scale cortical "Global workspace theory (Baars, 1988; 1997) is one of the most influential ideas in the burgeoning field of consciousness studies." "The global workspace comprises the five workspace nodes labeled W1 to W5, which serve to connect widely distributed regions of cortex." "Transitions from one workspace state to another are achieved thanks to the cortical populations C1 to C3. "Each of these is trained, using a form of spiketiming dependent plasticity (STDP), to respond to the appearance of a certain pattern Q in the workspace by taking on an associated pattern R, which may then invade the workspace in turn." "So taken together the two trials show that small differences at the level of individual neuron firings can result in qualitatively different sequences of workspace states at the macroscopic level (cf. Izhikevich & Edelman (2008)). ------------------------------------------------------- Izhikevich, E.M. & Edelman, G.M. (2008). Large-Scale Model of Mammalian Thalamocortical Systems. Proc. National Academy of Sciences 105 (9), 3593.3598. ------------------------------------------------------- A more complete description of the range of behaviours that can arise over multiple trials with differently trained networks can be found in Shanahan�fs papers (2008a; 2008b). ------------------------------------------------------------ Shanahan, M.P. (2008a). A Spiking Neuron Model of Cortical Broadcast and Competition. Consciousness and Cognition 17, 288.303. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shanahan, M.P. (2008b). Supplementary Note on �gA Spiking Neuron Model of Cortical Broadcast and Competition Consciousness and Cognition 17, 304.306. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The question of why evolution should favour neural networks with small-world properties naturally arises."