Saturday, October 6, 2012, 10 am – 12 pm, Donations accepted, Rodolfo Llinás: Thomas & Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience; Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, NYU

ON SELF AND SELF AWARENESS

Given that sensory inputs generate but a fractured representation of universals, the issue of perceptual unity concerns the mechanisms that allow these different sensory components to be gathered into one global image. In recent years, this has been described as ‘binding’, to be implemented by temporal conjunction. Because the number of possible categories of perceptions is so extensive, their implementation via purely hierarchical connectivity, where a single grandmother neuron or a small group of such neurons represent specific elements of a category, is very unlikely.

Presently, non-invasive technology, such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG), with a time resolution of 1000 images/second, can serve as a direct window into brain function in relation to cognition, and as an “online” biological marker to illustrate the effect of psychotherapy on abnormal brain function.

Discussant: Maggie Zellner, Ph.D.