Lectures by Christoph KOCH, 8 May: 1. “Building Brain Observatories” 2. “The Biology of Consciousness”

Event Start Date:
8. May 2015
Event End Date:
8. May 2015
Event Venue:

Prof. Christof Koch

Christof Koch is the Chief Scientific Officer of Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He was professor at California Institute of Technology 1986-2013.

Christof Koch is an eminent, leading pioneer in consciousness research. Since the early 1990s, he has studied the physical basis of consciousness as a scientifically tractable problem, and has been influential in arguing that consciousness can be approached using the modern tools of neurobiology. His primary collaborator in the endeavor of locating the neural correlates of consciousness was the molecular biologist turned neuroscientist, Francis Crick and, more recently, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi.

In 2011 Koch became the Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, leading their ten-year project concerning high-throughput large-scale cortical coding. The mission is to understand the computations that lead from photons to behavior by observing and modeling the physical transformations of signals in the visual brain of behaving mice. The project seeks to catalogue all the building blocks (ca. 100 distinct cell types) of the visual cortical regions and associated structures and their dynamics. The scientists seek to know what the animal sees, how it thinks and decides. The Allen Institute for Brain Science currently employs about 270 scientists, engineers, technologists and supporting personnel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christof_Koch

Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, USA

About the event:

  1.  Building Brain Observatories – Exploring Cortex in a High-Throughput Manner
  1.  The Biology of Consciousness

Friday, May 8, 12.00-14.30

Auditorium 1, Georg Sverdrups Hus/   Universitesbiblioteket, Blindern, Oslo

Moltke Moes vei 39 ved/Blindernveien, 0317 Oslo.

Christoph KOCH book_Quest for C

Programme:

12.00– 12.05   Introduction by Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, University of Oslo

12.05– 12.50   Christof Koch: Building Brain Observatories

12.50– 13.05  15 minutes break

13.05– 13.50   Christof Koch: The Biology of Consciousness

13.50– 14.20   A dialogue with Christof Koch on Consciousness

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