How may working memory give rise to consciousness?

Working memory is like a special table where your brain keeps things it’s thinking about right now, and that helps you become conscious of what's going on.

Imagine you're playing with building blocks. You grab one, then another, stacking them up as you go. Your working memory is like the space on the table where those blocks sit while you decide where to put them next. If your table gets too full, you might drop a block, just like if your brain gets too busy, you might forget what you were thinking about.

When you're playing with blocks, you’re conscious of each move you make because your brain is keeping track of everything on that special table. If you didn’t have that table, or working memory, you’d be like a robot who only knows what to do next without thinking about it.

But when you use working memory, you can think, “I put a red block first,” and then say, “Now I’ll add a blue one on top.” That’s how your brain becomes aware of what you're doing, and that’s the start of consciousness.