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.”

** YOUR NAME HERE! **
We would very much like to include you all to contribute to the discussion. Not only in the Q&A session, but also in the following open poster-session. Here is you chance to present your own thoughts on, challenges for, or ideas regarding the science and philosophy of consciousness, in a forum of your peers. Don’t be shy! All are welcome to sign up. If your pitch is selected, we will provide you with a poster template, print the final version for you, and have it prepared for the event. We are looking forward to your contributions, and the discussions it will bring about!