The existing empirical data on conscious access still present many challenges for theorizing. Indeed, the above theoretical synthesis may still be refuted if some of its key neural components were found

to be implausible or altogether absent in primate cerebral architecture, or if its predicted patterns of activity (the late “ignition”) were found to be unnecessary, Z-VAD-FMK cell line artifactual, noncoding, or noncausally related to conscious states. We consider each of these potential challenges in turn. Pyramidal neurons with long-distance axons. The main anatomical premise of the GNW model is that it consists of “a distributed set of cortical neurons characterized by their ability to receive from and send back to homologous neurons in other cortical areas horizontal projections through long-range excitatory axons mostly originating from the pyramidal cells of layers II and III” ( Dehaene et al., 1998a) and more densely distributed in prefrontal and inferior parietal cortices. Do these units actually Vorinostat manufacturer exist? The “special morphology” of the pyramidal cells from the cerebral cortex was already noted by Cajal (1899–1904), who mentioned their “long axons with multiple collaterals” and their “very numerous and complex dendrites.” Von Economo (1929) further noted that these large pyramidal cells in layers III and

V are especially abundant in areas “spread over the anterior two-thirds of the frontal lobe, (…) the superior parietal lobule” and “the cingulate cortex,” among other cortical areas. Recent investigations have confirmed that long-distance cortico-cortical and callosal fibers primarily (though not exclusively) arise from Ketanserin layer II-III pyramids. Furthermore, quantitative analyses of the dendritic field morphology

of layer III pyramidal neurons revealed a continuous increase of complexity of the basal dendrites from the occipital up to the prefrontal cortex within a given species ( DeFelipe and Fariñas, 1992, Elston and Rosa, 1997 and Elston and Rosa, 1998) and from lower species (owl monkey, marmoset) up to humans ( Elston, 2003). Layer IV PFC pyramidal neurons have as many as 16 times more spines in PFC than in V1 and, as a result, “the highly spinous cells in prefrontal areas may integrate many more inputs than cells in areas such as V1, TE, and 7a” ( Elston, 2000). These observations confirm that PFC cells exhibit the morphological adaptations needed for massive long-distance communication, information integration, and broadcasting postulated in the GNW model and suggest that this architecture is particularly developed in the human species. Global brain-scale white matter networks involving PFC. The GNW model further assumes that long-distance neurons form brain-scale networks involving prefrontal cortex as a key node.