Bernard J Baars

Bernard J. Baars is best known as the originator of the Global Workspace Theory (GWT), a theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex, and consciousness. Recipient of International Neural Network Society 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Award recognizing scientific life contributions proven to be paradigm changing, which demonstrate outstanding research achievements in perception. As professor of psychology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and as faculty member at the Wright...See more

Bernard J. Baars is best known as the originator of the Global Workspace Theory (GWT), a theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex, and consciousness. Recipient of International Neural Network Society 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Award recognizing scientific life contributions proven to be paradigm changing, which demonstrate outstanding research achievements in perception. As professor of psychology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and as faculty member at the Wright Institute, he conducted research into the causation of human errors and the Freudian slip. A former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA., he is currently Editor in Chief of the Society for Mind Brain Sciences. Baars co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Academic Press journal Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, which he also edited, with William P. Banks for fifteen years.In addition to research on global workspace theory with Professor Stan Franklin and others, Baars is working to re-introduce the topic of the conscious brain into the standard college and graduate school curriculum. Baars has also published on animal consciousness, volition, and feelings of knowing, and has published an approach to "higher" states, as defined in the meditation traditions. New brain recording methods continue to reveal unexpected evidence on those topics. See less