Date and time: October 7^th, 2026, 18:00-19:30   (6:00-7:30 pm Oslo time).

We are pleased to announce an upcoming online lecture by Dr. Daniel Freeman from MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Title: Experiential Brain Mapping with Transcranial Focused Ultrasound

Bio

Daniel Freeman is a scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory whose research spans neurotechnology, device physics, and analog computing. His current work includes the use of transcranial focused ultrasound to investigate the neural basis of subjective experience, analog computing approaches for energy-efficient AI, MEMS hydrophones, quantum magnetometers, and electronic textiles. He received his PhD in biomedical engineering from Boston University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School and MIT.

Abstract

Identifying the brain structures that contribute directly to subjective experience remains one of the most challenging problems in science. While much insight has been gained by measuring brain activity in humans with EEG and fMRI, the field would benefit greatly from new methods of non-invasive brain stimulation. Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) offers a new approach that enables millimeter-scale spatial precision across both cortical and deep brain structures. Here, we discuss how tFUS can be combined with psychophysics and EEG measurements to help localize the neural substrate of subjective experience. Specifically, causal perturbation may help distinguish neural activity that generates experience from activity involved in unconscious processing, including processes involved in cognition and behavioral report. Activity evoked by tFUS will inevitably propagate through interconnected neural circuits, complicating the ability to distinguish correlation from causation. We discuss how combining tFUS stimulation with temporally resolved neural measurements may address this challenge.

References

1. Daniel K. Freeman, Brian Odegaard, Seung-Schik Yoo, Matthias Michel (2026)  Transcranial focused ultrasound for identifying the neural substrate of conscious perception. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 180 (2026) 106485

3. Pellow C, Pichardo S, Pike GB. A systematic review of preclinical and clinical transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation and opportunities for functional connectomics. Brain Stimul. 2024 Jul-Aug;17(4):734-751.
4. Aubry JF, Attali D, Schafer ME, Fouragnan E, Caskey CF, Chen R, Darmani G, Bubrick EJ, Sallet J, Butler CR, Stagg CJ, Klein-Flügge MC, Yoo SS, Holland CK, Treeby B, Martin E, Verhagen L, Butts Pauly K. ITRUSST consensus on biophysical safety for transcranial ultrasound stimulation. Brain Stimul. 2025 Nov-Dec;18(6):1896-1905.
5. D. K. Freeman and S. J. Byrnes, “Optimal Frequency for Wireless Power Transmission Into the Body: Efficiency Versus Received Power,” in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 4073-4083, June 2019.
6. Freeman DK, Rizzo JF 3rd, Fried SI. Encoding visual information in retinal ganglion cells with prosthetic stimulation. J Neural Eng. 2011 Jun;8(3):035005.
7. Freeman DK, Rizzo JF 3rd, Fried SI. Encoding visual information in retinal ganglion cells with prosthetic stimulation. J Neural Eng. 2011 Jun;8(3):035005. doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/8/3/035005. Epub 2011 May 18. PMID: 21593546; PMCID: PMC3157751.

Live Lecture in Oslo: Lucia Melloni

Date: October 2026 (Tentative date: 14 October) Location: Oslo

Join us for a live lecture by Lucia Melloni (Ruhr-University-Bochum, Germany and NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York).

Title: Testing Theories, Expanding Minds: Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead

Further details regarding the exact time and venue in Oslo will be provided soon.

Lucia Melloni
Predictive Brain Department, University Alliance Ruhr, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Department of Neurology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, USA
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Brain, Mind, and Consciousness Program, Toronto, ON, Canada

Abstract:
Consciousness remains one of the deepest mysteries in science. We still lack answers to fundamental questions: how and why we feel the way we feel; why we experience the world in the rich, structured manner we do; and why millions of patients lose and regain consciousness every day, while countless others never recover it. At the same time, urgent debates about AI consciousness, the risk of ascribing experience where there is none, and the moral cost of overlooking the experiences of animals or other nonverbal beings make the scientific study of consciousness more pressing than ever.
In this talk, I will introduce two ongoing lines of work that aim to reshape how the field advances: (i) open-science adversarial collaborations designed to test competing theories of consciousness and accelerate scientific convergence, and (ii) emerging efforts to build a science of consciousness that is not anchored exclusively in adult neurotypical minds but instead embraces the diversity of minds found across development, species, and even artificial systems. Such an approach requires us to acknowledge from the outset that consciousness may manifest in ways unfamiliar to us, and that beings who cannot speak, fetuses, infants, nonhuman animals, AI systems, and perhaps even engineered biological collectives, may (or may not) nevertheless instantiate forms of experience worth understanding.

Together, these efforts aim to move the field toward a more rigorous, collaborative, and inclusive framework, one in which theories are openly tested, assumptions are examined rather than inherited, and the full spectrum of possible conscious minds is taken seriously.

Online Lecture: Marcello Massimini – Unfortunately, we have to cancel this even until further notice

Date: Cancelled Location: N.a.

We are pleased to announce an upcoming online lecture by Marcello Massimini from the University of Milan.

Tentative Title: Cortical mechanisms of consciousness

Further details regarding the exact time and streaming access will be announced closer to the date.

Guest Lecture at INN: David Chalmers

Date: 12 June 2026 Location: Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN), Campus Lillehammer

Please note that this lecture is not hosted by the Forum for Consciousness Research in Oslo, but by the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. The event takes place at Campus Lillehammer and is organised by the Inland School of Business and Social Sciences.

For more information about the event, please visit the official event page.

For access to the online streaming of the lecture, please email Anna-Sara Malmgren (anna-sara.malmgren@inn.no) to request a Teams link.

Time: March 4th, from 9:00 am.

Venue: Auditorium L200, Domus Medica, Gaustadalleen 34

In relation to our colleague Andre S. Nilsen’s PhD defense, we are organizing an open symposium with Prof. Lorina Naci, Phd, and Michael Schartner, PhD. Michael will talk about how we can use complexity measures to quantify conscious states, while Lorina will tell us about her investigations about what we can say regarding consciousness in infants. 

In addition to the talks and discussion with these experts in the field, we also wish to invite you all to contribute your own thoughts on consciousness in a small poster session. If you are interested in contributing, please sign up here: https://nettskjema.no/a/597758
Provided we get enough contributions, we will select up to ten posters to be presented during the final session.

Program:

9:00- 9:30 — Meet and greet
9:30-10:00 — Talk by Michael Schartner, “Quantifying Conscious States with Neural Signal Complexity”
10:00-10:30 — Talk by prof. Lorina Naci, “Consciousness in the cradle: on the emergence of infant experience” (tentative title)
10:30-11:00 — Q&A with the speakers, chaired by Andre S Nilsen
11:00-12:00 — Poster session and mingling (all are welcome to contribute!)

Contributors:

Lorina Naci, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, where she leads research on how the brain supports human cognition and consciousness, and how these processes are disrupted by injury or disease. Her work combines brain imaging, psychological theory, and studies of patients to develop practical tools that can improve diagnosis and care, while also addressing the ethical implications of these advances. She also investigates early brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease, aiming to enable earlier detection and better understanding of this growing global health challenge. This research is carried out in collaboration with international partners through the PREVENT consortium and the Global Brain Health Institute. She will give a talk tentatively titled “Consciousness in the cradle: on the emergence of infant experience” (abstract TBA).

Michael Schartner, Phd, is a senior data scientist at the International Brain Laboratory, where he applies machine learning and large-scale data analysis to uncover the neural basis of decision making in animals. Trained originally in mathematics and physics at Maynooth University and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, he went on to complete a PhD in consciousness science at the University of Sussex, focusing on how the complexity of brain activity relates to conscious states. His early work helped advance quantitative approaches to consciousness, using complexity and information-theoretic measures to study awareness in healthy brains and altered states. Today, he develops deep-learning methods for tracking behavior in mice and linking it to neural recordings, contributing to reproducible, large-scale neuroscience while continuing to pursue fundamental questions about how mind arises from matter.

Michael will give a talk titled “Quantifying Conscious States with Neural Signal Complexity”, for which he has provided the following abstract: “Understanding how global states of consciousness relate to neural dynamics remains a central problem in neuroscience. Building on early theoretical work by Edelman and Tononi on neural complexity, this talk provides a concise overview of how complexity-based measures have evolved into empirically grounded and clinically applicable indices of brain state. I will review evidence linking both spontaneous and perturbational measures of neural signal diversity—such as entropy-based metrics, Lempel–Ziv complexity, and the Perturbational Complexity Index—to levels of consciousness across physiological and pharmacological conditions. Particular focus will be given to comparative findings across wakefulness, different stages of sleep, general anesthesia, and psychedelic states. Together, these results support the view that global states of consciousness are reliably associated with systematic changes in large-scale neural signal complexity, offering a quantitative bridge between theoretical models and practical assessment of conscious level.”

A live online lecture by Ned Block, New York University

 Wednesday, November 5^th,  19.00 – 20.45, Oslo time (13:00 – 14:45 EST)  on Zoom

Video recording:

Abstract by NB: Computational functionalism claims that executing certain computations is sufficient for consciousness, regardless of the physical mechanisms implementing those computations. This view does not take sufficiently seriously the possibility that sub-computational biological mechanisms which realize computational processes are necessary for consciousness. Using the contrast between computational roles and their sub-computational biological realizers, I show that our criteria for consciousness in AI and animals may lead to opposing conclusions and in that sense AI and animals are competitors. Current theories of consciousness are “meat-neutral,” but if meat is necessary, AI may never be conscious. Understanding whether consciousness depends on computational roles, biological realizers, or both is crucial for assessing the prospects of conscious AI and in simple animals.

Ned Block in an eminent philosopher of mind, who has made important contributions to the philosophy of consciousness and cognitive science. He has been professor of philosophy and psychology at New York University since 1996, and a Silver Professor since 2005. Block has mounted the overflow argument, which argues that phenomenal consciousness overflows conscious access, implying that one can consciously experience something that one lacks conscious access to. Block is also noted for presenting the Blockhead argument against the Turing test as a test of intelligence, and is also known for his criticism of functionalism, arguing that a system with the same functional states as a human is not necessarily conscious.

A live online lecture by Susan Carey, Harvard University

Wednesday, October 29th, 7 PM Oslo time (CET), 1 PM EST,  19.00 – 20.45 on Zoom

Video Recording:

Abstract:

Cognitive science was born in the 1950s with the adoption of the computational/representational theory of mind. The cognitive revolution enabled empirical progress on foundational issues that had been debated since the time of the Greek philosophers, including new formulations of the rationalist/empiricist debate and new principled distinctions among representational systems. I sketch the current state of the art, as I see it, concerning distinctions in representational formats between fully implicit vehicles of content and explicit representational vehicles and also between iconic representations and symbolic representations. I sketch evidence for the proposal that prelinguistic representations, including those in perception those in core knowledge (rich abstract systems of representation attested in infancy and in non-human animals of many species), are fundamentally different in both format and content from linguistic representations. I sketch evidence for a speculation both ancient and modern in philosophy (e.g. Descartes, Davidson), as well as more recent within cognitive science: namely, prelinguistic representations do not support propositional reasoning. If concepts are atoms of propositions, there are no innate concepts. Innate support for logical thought is part of the human adaptation for language and emerges in ontogenesis in the course of acquiring language.

Susan Carey in an eminent cognitive psychologist and professor at Harvard University. She studies language acquisition, children’s development of concepts, conceptual changes over time, and the importance of executive functions. Carey received a PhD from the Harvard Psychology Department in 1972, taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Brain and Cognitive Science Department from 1972 to 1996, at New York University (NYU) in the Psychology Department from 1996-2001, and at Harvard in the Psychology Department from 2001-2023. She retired from teaching in 2003 and is now a Research Professor at Harvard and a Visiting Scholar at NYU in Psychology and Visiting Scholar at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in Cognitive Science.

On June 17th, Professor MATTHEW LARKUM,  Humboldt University of Berlin, gave a lecture in our Forum for Consciousness Research, Oslo.

A recording of the lecture can be seen here:

[In addition: A symposium on Consciousness Research with Matthew Larkum and Björn Merker from the same day can be found here.]

Deep control – Layer 6b as a gatekeeper of conscious processing

Matthew Larkum, Professor, Humboldt University of Berlin.

Time: Tuesday, June 17^th, 2025, 18.30-20.00

Venue: Sophus Lies auditorium,  Blindern Campus (Moltke Moes vei), University of Oslo

After the lecture, 18.30 – 19.30, there will be time for questions and discussion.

Please register if you wish to attend. The event will also be live-streamed (see below).

Some articles by Matthew Larkum

Aru, J., Drüke, M., Pikamäe, J., & Larkum, M. E. (2023). Mental navigation and the neural mechanisms of insight. Trends in Neurosciences. 

Gidon, A., Aru, J., & Larkum, M. E. (2022). Does brain activity cause consciousness? A thought experiment. Plos Biology, 20(6), e3001651. 

Prof. Mark Solms, PhD, University of Cape Town

will give a lecture in our forum:

The cortical fallacy and the hard problem of consciousness

Time: September 25, 2024  16.30-18.30

Venue: Sophus Lies Auditorium, Blindern Campus, University of Oslo

Professor Mark Solms is Director of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town. He is also Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the St Bartholomew’s & Royal London Hospital School of Medicine and an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the American and South African Psychoanalytic Associations. He has published 350 scientific papers, and eight books, the latest being The Hidden Spring (Norton, 2021).