There seems to me to be a conceptual difference between the kinds of actions that change the contents of consciousness, and the kinds of actions which accumulate evidence over many items in consciousness (such as iterative memories of snacks). Zylberberg et al. talk about a “winner-take-all race” to trigger a production rule, which to me implies that the evidence accumulated in favor of each production rule is cleared each time that the contents of consciousness is changed. This is seemingly incompatible with accumulating evidence over many consciousness-moments, so postulating a two-level distinction between accumulators seems like a straightforward way of resolving the issue.
[EDIT:Hazard suggeststhat the two-level split is implemented by the basal ganglia carrying out evidence accumulation across changes in conscious content.]
Nice! That certainly clarifies things. :) Mind if I edit my article to include a reference to your post?
No problem!
Cool, done. :)