Forum for Consciousness Research  invites you to an open meeting with a lecture by Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux titled

Toward a molecular biology of conscious processing: consequences for drug design

The Lecture will take place in Auditorium 1, at Georg Sverdrups Hus (Universitesbiblioteket), Blindern.

Programme:
13.00 – 13.05  Opening by Ole M. Sejersted, President of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
13.05– 13.10   Introduction by Professor Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, University of Oslo
13.10– 14.00   Lecture by Professor Jean-Pierre CHANGEUX
14.00– 14.30   Questions from the audience / Discussion

 All are welcome to attend!

Jean-Pierre Changeux, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of the Collège de France in Paris, and an eminent pioneer in consciousness research. He is also famous for his outstanding research in several different branches of biology, ranging from the molecular biology of proteins to higher brain functions. In particular, he is known for the Monod-Wyman-Changeux model for allosteric proteins, his work on synaptic receptors in muscles and brain (in particular nicotinic acetyl choline receptors), principles for development of the nervous system and brain, and the Global Neuronal Workspace model of consciousness that he developed together with Stanislas Dehaene. Changeux is known by the non-scientific public for his ideas regarding the connection between mind and physical brain, first through his famous book Neuronal Man: The Biology of The Mind in 1985. Changeux strongly supports the view that the nervous system functions in a projective rather than reactive style and that interaction with the environment, rather than being instructive, results in the selection amongst a diversity of preexisting internal representations. Changeux has also for decades been engaged in neuroethics: the ethical and social consequences of the recent progress in neuroscience. He headed the National Advisory Committee on Bioethics in France from 1992 to 1998, and organized a conference that led to the book Fondements naturel de l’ethique. He is presently the co-chairman of the Ethics and Society division of the European Human Brain Project (HBP). Changeux has received numerous scientific prizes and awards. Furthermore, he is Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Science, member of the French Institute and Grand Officier dans l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur, and the recipient of many awards including the Wolff prize.

Changeux has published several books: Neuronal Man: The Biology of The Mind (1985) brought him celebrity status among the wider public. Conversations on Mind Matter and Mathematics (1998) with mathematician A. Connes. What Makes Us Think with the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (2002) and The Physiology of Truth (2002) that are acknowledged as having initiated an instructive dialogue between the two often-hostile disciplines of neuroscience and philosophy. He has also been concerned by the relationships between aesthetic experience and the brain in Raison & Plaisir (1994), The true the good the beautiful: a neurobiological approach (2012), and Les neurones enchantés (2014) about artistic creation. Changeux received the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, Rockefeller University, New-York, 2005. (See http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Bq3F8iIAAAAJ&hl=en/ ,Wikipedia, etc.)

Sponsored by SERTA:

The Changing Brain