May 3rd – Anil Seth “Eight key questions for consciousness science”
Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. It fades every night when we fall into a dreamless sleep, and returns again when we wake up or dream. Without consciousness there would be no world and no self; there would be nothing at all. Over the last decade or two, a new science of consciousness has begun to reveal its biological basis. This new science will not only help us better understand our place in nature, but will also provide important new opportunities for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. For these reasons, understanding the biology of consciousness is widely recognized as a key scientific challenge for the 21st century. In this talk Anil Seth will give a whistle-stop tour of the frontiers of consciousness science, focusing on eight ‘key’ questions driving current research.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Anil Seth is Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, which was founded in 2010 and is now recognized as an internationally leading focus for consciousness research. He is also Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at Sussex, an EPSRC Leadership Fellow, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam. Research in his group integrates consciousness science with computational and cognitive neuroscience, bringing together psychologists, mathematicians, physicists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and philosophers. He has delivered over 100 lectures internationally including more than 20 keynote and public talks, and his work has been widely covered in the media including the New Scientist, The Guardian, and The Observer. He has published over 90 scientific papers and is currently editing and co-writing ‘The 30 Second Brain’ for Lewes-based Icon Press. He holds degrees in Natural Sciences (MA, Cambridge, 1994), Knowledge-Based Systems (M.Sc., Sussex, 1996) and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (D.Phil., Sussex, 2001). He was also a postdoctoral and associate fellow at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego