Why intracranial electrical stimulation of the human brain suggests an essential role for prefrontal cortex in conscious processing: a commentary on Raccah et al.

We read with interest the synthesis by Raccah and colleagues on the perturbations of consciousexperience elicited by intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in awakeneurosurgical patients. The main outcome of the review is the report that iES of the PFC shows fewercausal changes of conscious experience than iES of posterior sensory areas. The authors interpretedthis finding as a challenge to neuroscientific theories of conscious processing that attribute a centralrole to PFC, such a Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and Higher Order Thought theory(HOT). We agree that this anterior vs posterior issue may offer an experimental challenge that thepresent theories of conscious processing have to take up, and we provide here a list of seven majorpoints that begin to specify a GNWT account for the observations compiled by Raccah and colleaguestogether with more recent, unmentioned, data.