Forum for bevissthetsforskning og Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi

Forum for Consciousness Research  and The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters          

invites you to an open meeting with a lecture by:

Professor Terrence W. Deacon

professor of Biological Anthropology and Linguistics at University of California-Berkeley.

“On consciousness –

Emergence of Life and Consciousness: How “self” can be physical and yet neither material nor energetic”

Time: Saturday 10 January, 2015:  14.00- 16.00,

Place: Litteraturhuset, Auditorium “Amalie Skram”*, Wergelandsveien 29, Oslo 1

Dr. Deacon is professor of Biological Anthropology and Linguistics at University of California-Berkeley.

Programme:

14.00 – 14.05   Opening by Professor Øivind Andersen, secretary general of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

14.05– 14.10   Introduction by Johan F. Storm, Professor of Neurophysiology, University of Oslo

14.10– 15.10   Lecture by Terrence W. Deacon

15.10– 15.20   10 minutes break

15.20– 16.00   Panel discussion and questions from the audience

Bioschetch from http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/

Professor Deacon’s research has combined human evolutionary biology and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. His work extends from laboratory-based cellular-molecular neurobiology to the study of semiotic processes underlying animal and human communication, especially language. Many of these interests are explored in his 1997 book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain.

His neurobiological research is focused on determining the nature of the human divergence from typical primate brain anatomy, the cellular-molecular mechanisms producing this difference, and the correlations between these anatomical differences and special human cognitive abilities, particularly language. In pursuit of these questions he has used a variety of laboratory approaches including the tracing of axonal connections, quantitative analysis of regions of different species brains, and cross-species fetal neural transplantation. The goal is to identify elements of the developmental genetic mechanisms that distinguish human brains from other ape brains, to aid the study of the cognitive consequences of human brain evolution.

His theoretical interests include the study of evolution-like processes at many levels, including their role in embryonic development, neural signal processing, language change, and social processes, and how these different processes interact and depend on each other. Currently, his theoretical interests have focused on the problem of explaining emergent phenomena, such as characterize such apparently unprecedented transitions as the origin of life, the evolution of language, and the generation of conscious experience by brains. This is fueled by a career-long interest in the ideas of the late 19th-century American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce and his theory of semiosis. His new book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, explores the relationship between thermodynamic, self-organizing, evolutionary and semiotic processes and provides a new technical conception of information that explains both its representational and normative Properties.

20150102_POSTER_DEACON-møte_FBF_10 jan_JFS13

Dr. Deacon is invited to Oslo by The Department of Social Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, to give a lecture on 7 January 2015:

Jan 7, 2015:

Instituttseminaret SAI (Sosialantropologisk insitutt, UiO): Terrence Tid og sted: Instituttseminaret SAI: Terrence Deacon foreleser 7. jan. 2015 14:15 – 16:00, Blindern, Eilert Sundts hus, rom 648 i 6. Etasje.

Tittel og abstract vil snart foreligge. Seminaret er åpent for alle, ingen påmelding påkrevet.

http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/forskning/aktuelt/arrangementer/instituttseminaret/2015/Deacon-januar-07.html

Jan 9, 2015:

Prof. Deacon will also lecture Jan 9, 2015  at Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis,   http://www.mn.uio.no/cees/english/      Friday seminar

In 2013, Deacon gave the lecture at the Bateson-symposium organised by SAI, UiO in 2013,: “Why systems thinking is not enough: From the origins of life to the current eco-crisis”. A video (app. 30 min) from this event is available on the internet through NRK.no (Kunnskapskanalen) http://tv.nrk.no/serie/kunnskapskanalen/MDFP15002114/01-11-2014#t=19s.

Bionote (from Wikipedia):

Prof. Deacon’s theoretical interests include the study of evolution-like processes at multiple levels, including their role in embryonic development, neural signal processing, language change, social processes, and focusing especially on how these different processes interact and depend on each other. He has long stated an interest in developing a scientific semiotics (particularly biosemiotics) that would contribute to both linguistic theory and cognitive neuroscience.

Deacon’s research combines human evolutionary biology and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. His work extends from laboratory-based cellular-molecular neurobiology to the study of semiotic processes underlying animal and human communication, especially language and language origins. His neurobiological research is focused on determining the nature of the human divergence from typical primate brain anatomy, the cellular-molecular mechanisms producing this difference, and the correlations between these anatomical differences and special human cognitive abilities, again, particularly language.^[1]

Work

His 1997 book, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. His approach to semiotics, thoroughly described in the book, is fueled by a career-long interest in the ideas of the late 19th-century American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. In it, he uses the metaphors of parasite and host to describe language and the brain, respectively, arguing that the structures of language have co-evolved to adapt to their brain hosts.

His 2011 book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, explores the properties of life, the emergence of consciousness, and the relationship between evolutionary and semiotic processes. The book proposes a scientific theory of how properties such as information, value, purpose, meaning, and end-directed behavior emerged from physics and chemistry. Critics of the book argue that Deacon has drawn heavily from the works of Alicia Juarrero and Evan Thompson without providing full citations or references, but a UC Berkeley investigation exonerated Deacon.^[2]

In contrast to the arguments presented by Juarrero in Dynamics of Action (1999, MIT Press) and by Thompson in Mind in Life (2007, Belknap Press and Harvard University Press), Deacon explicitly rejects claims that living or mental phenomena can be explained by dynamical systems approaches. Instead, Deacon argues that life- or mind-like properties only emerge from a higher-order reciprocal relationship between self-organizing processes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Deacon

Books

• The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1997. ISBN 978-0-393-31754-1
• Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-04991-6

Articles and essays

• Deacon, T.W. (1989). “Holism and associationism in neuropsychology: an anatomical synthesis.” in E. Perecman (Ed.), Integrating Theory and Practice in Clinical Neuropsychology. Erlbaum. Hilsdale, NJ. 1-47.
• Deacon, T.W. (1990). “Rethinking mammalian brain evolution.” Am Zool. 30:629–705.
• Deacon, T.W. (1997). “What makes the human brain different?” Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 26: 337-57.
• Deacon, T.W. (2001). “Heterochrony in brain evolution.” In Parker et al. (eds.), Biology, Brains, and Behavior. SAR Press, pp. 41–88.
• Deacon, T.W. (2006). “Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel’s Hub.” Chapter 5 in P. Clayton & P. Davies (Eds.), The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion. Oxford University Press, pp. 111–150.
• Deacon, T.W. (2006). “Reciprocal linkage between self-organizing processes is sufficient for self-reproduction and evolvability.” Biological Theory 1(2):136-149.
• Deacon, T.W. (2007). “Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information. Part 1.” Cognitive Semiotics 1:123-148.
• Deacon, T.W. (2008). “Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information. Part 2.” Cognitive Semiotics 2:167-194.
• Kull, Kalevi; Deacon, Terrence; Emmeche, Claus; Hoffmeyer, Jesper; Stjernfelt, Frederik. (2009). Theses on biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a theoretical biology. Biological Theory 4(2): 167–173.
• Deacon, T.W. (2010). “A role for relaxed selection in the evolution of the language capacity.” PNAS.107:9000-9006.
• Deacon, T.W. (2010). “On the Human: Rethinking the natural selection of human language” [1]

External links

• Terrence Deacon’s home page at the University of California, Berkeley – including online publications http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/users/terrence-w-deacon

• Interview with Terrence Deacon on the co-evolution of language and the brain
• Participants: Terrence W. Deacon, a biography in connection with his participation in “God, Matter, and Information: What is Ultimate?”, a 2006 symposium in Copenhagen.
• New York Review of Books review of Incomplete Nature  http://emergence.org/McGinn.pdf
• http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/oct/11/search-sentience/

• Chronicle of Higher Education article on the Incomplete Nature controversy
• Chronicle of Higher Education article on UC-Berkeley’s exoneration of Deacon (Incomplete Nature controversy) http://chronicle.com/article/UC-Berkeley-Exonerates/136919

Lecture by:  Prof. Adrian Owen

Brain and Mind Institute,  The University of Western Ontario, Canada

“Using Functional Neuroimaging to Detect Awareness After Serious Brain Injury“

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 18.00-20.00

in The Norwegian Academy of Science And Letters / Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi,

Drammensveien 78,    0271 Oslo.

Programme:
18.00 – 18.05   Opening by Nils Chr. Stenseth President of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
18.05- 18.10   Introduction by Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, University of Oslo
18.10- 19.00   Lecture by Adrian Owen
19.10- 20.10   Panel discussion (A.Owen, M. Løvstad, O. Gjelsvik, JF Storm) and questions from the audience

20131005_NY PLAKAT-NyLogo_OWEN-møte-DNVA 7 Oct_JFS

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Dr Adrian Owen is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuro- science and Imaging at The Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, Canada.

His 2006 paper in the journal Science demonstrated that functional neuroimaging could be used to detect awareness in a patient who was incapable of generating any recognized behavioural response and appeared to be in a vegetative state.

Dr. Adrian Owen’s work combines structural and functional neuroimaging with neuropsychological studies of brain-injured patients. His work, reported in the journals Science (2006), The New England Journal of Medicine (2010), The Lancet (2011), PNAS (2014) etc., has shown that functional neuroimaging can reveal conscious awareness in some patients who appear to be entirely vegetative, and can even allow some of these individuals to communicate their thoughts and wishes to the outside world. These findings have attracted widespread media attention on TV, radio, in print and online and have been the subject of several TV and radio documentaries. Since 1990, Dr Owen has published over 200 articles in scientific journals and books. – See more at: http://www.gairdner.org/content/adrian-m-Owen

Forum for bevissthetsforskning  &  Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi         

inviterer til

ÅPENT MØTE  10. juni 2014,

med foredrag av:

Prof. Jaak Panksepp

Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA

The Neuroscientific Case for Emotional Feelings in Other Animals

18.00 – 18.05  Opening by Nils Chr. Stenseth, President of The Norwegian Academy of Scienceand Letters

18.05– 18.10   Introduction by Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, University of Oslo

18.10– 19.10   Lecture, Jaak Panksepp: The Neuroscientific Case for Emotional Feelings in Other Animals

19.10– 20.00   Panel discussion and questions from the audience

Jaak Panksepp is an eminent pioneer in the field of affective neuroscience – the study of neural mechanisms of emotion in animals and man. We have invited him also because he represents a very interesting and original perspective in the discussion of the neural basis of consciousness.  He argues for the importance of emotional feelings generated by evolutionary old parts of the brain, and that these may produce intense conscious emotional experiences in a wide range of animal species. Whereas most neuroscientists studying consciousness focus on cognitive conscious abilities (perception, knowledge, thoughts) that are primarily generated by the cerebral cortex – in particular our “new” cortex (neocortex) that is so greatly expanded in humans and other “advanced” mammals – Panksepp argues that the “deeper” (subcortical) and evolutionary older parts of the brain may be equally important and perhaps even more fundamental for primary consciousness: our ability to experience. I have for many years been interested in this perspective, which can be considered to be complementary to the study of cortical substrates of consciousness, also because it may have serious implications for how we treat other species, and also humans with severe brain damage.                                                                            – Johan F. Storm

Jaak Pankseppis an Estonian-born American psychologist, psychobiologist, and neuroscientist, the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Emeritus Professor of the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University. Panksepp introduced the term ‘affective neuroscience  the name for the field that studies the neural mechanisms of emotion.

Articles and Books by Jaak Panksepp:

1. Panksepp, J (1992). «A critical role for «affective neuroscience» in resolving what is basic about basic emotions.». Psychological review 99 (3): 554–60.
2. Grandin, Temple; Johnson, Catherine (2005). Animals in Translation. New York, New York: Scribner. p. 207..
3. Panksepp, J. (1979). «A neurochemical theory of autism». Trends in Neurosciences 2: 174–177.
4. Panksepp J (Ed.) (2004) A Textbook of Biological Psychiatry, New York, Wiley
5. Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press.
6. Panksepp, J (Ed.) (1995, 1996). Advances in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 1-2, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
7. Clynes, M. and Panksepp, J. (Eds.) (1988). Emotions and Psychopathology, New York, Plenum Press.
8. Panksepp, J., and Biven, L. (2012). The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotion. W. W. Norton & Company.
9. Morgane, J. P., and Panksepp, J. (Eds.). (1981). Handbook of the Hypothalamus: Vol. 4 : Part B. Behavioral Studies of the Hypothalamus. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.

Welcome!                                    GRATIS ADGANG

Johan F. Storm, Forum for bevissthetsforskning 

Se også:    http://www.dnva.no/

http://www.litteraturhuset.no/program/2014/06/Storm.html

Lecture by Prof. Giulio Tononi

School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry
University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA

Consciousness: From phenomenology to mechanisms, and back

Time:    Friday, 4 April 2014, 18.00-20.30

Place:   Litteraturhuset, Wergelandsveien, Oslo 1 (sal “Wergeland“)

Programme:

18.00 – 18.05   Opening by Nils Chr. StensethPresident of The Norwegian Academy of Scienceand Letters

18.05– 18.10   Introduction by Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, University of Oslo

18.10– 19.10   Lecture by Giulio Tononi: Consciousness:From phenomenology to mechanisms, and back (60 min)

19.10– 19.25   Coffee break (15 min)

19.25– 20.30   Panel discussion and questions from the audience

Chair:   Nils Chr. Stenseth President of The Norwegian Academy of Scienceand Letters

20130407_R4-A3_PLAKAT_TONONI-MØTET Litthuset 4-Apri_RETTET Chair etc_JFS

Giulio Tononi is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has held faculty positions in Pisa, New York, San Diego and Madison, Wisconsin, where he is Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Tononi and collaborators have pioneered several complementary approaches to study sleep. These include genomics, proteomics, fruit fly models, rodent models employing multiunit / local field potential recordings in behaving animals, in vivo voltammetry and microscopy, high-density EEG recordings and transcranial magnetic stimulation in humans, and large-scale computer models of sleep and wakefulness. This research has led to a comprehensive hypothesis on the function of sleep, the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, wakefulness leads to a net increase in synaptic strength, and sleep is necessary to reestablish synaptic homeostasis. The hypothesis has implications for understanding the effects of sleep deprivation and for developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to sleep disorders and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Another focus of Dr. Tononi’s work is the integrated information theory of consciousness (IITC): a scientific theory of what consciousness is, how it can be measured, how it is realized in the brain and, of course, why it fades when we fall into dreamless sleep and returns when we dream. The theory is being tested with neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and computer models. In 2005, Dr. Tononi received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his work on sleep mechanism and function, and in 2008 he was made the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine and is a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science.

Welcome!

Johan F. Storm,

on behalf of

Forum for Consciousness Research

(Forum for bevissthetsforskning) 

LECTURE Friday, 4 April by

Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli

School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA

Sleep and the price of plasticity

Giulio Tononi is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has held faculty positions in Pisa, New York, San Diego and Madison, Wisconsin, where he is Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Tononi has developed The integrated information theory of consciousness (IITC) a scientific theory of what consciousness is, how it can be measured, how it is realized in the brain and why it fades when we fall into dreamless sleep and returns when we dream. The theory is being tested with neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and computer models. In 2005, Dr. Tononi received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his work on sleep mechanism and function, and in 2008 he was made the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine and is a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science.

Chiara Cirelli (MD, PhD, University of Pisa) is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research aims at understanding the function of sleep and clarifying the functional consequences of sleep loss. Her team uses a combination of different approaches, from genetics in fruit flies to whole-genome expression profiling in invertebrates and mammals, to behavioral and EEG analysis in mice and rats. The first approach exploits Drosophila genetics to identify genes involved in sleep regulation. Overall, it appears that sleep need is related to synaptic plasticity, an idea that is being tested in several animal models. The second approach involves whole-genome profiling to identify the genes whose expression changes in the brain in sleep relative to wakefulness. In rats, she found that hundreds of genes are differentially expressed in the brain during sleep and wake.

The results of these and other studies have prompted a new hypothesis about the functions of sleep.          C. Cirelli and G. Tononi have hypothesized that the amount of synaptic potentiation that occurs during waking is a major determinant of sleep intensity, and that sleep is needed to down-regulate synaptic weight. The synaptic homeostasis hypothesisis being tested at several different levels in a joint effort, ranging from computer simulations and high-density EEG and transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments in humans to molecular, behavioral, and electrophysiological experiments in flies and rodents.

Welcome!

Johan F. Storm,   On behalf of Forum for bevissthetsforskning

20130326_PLAKAT_TUTORIAL-IITC_TONONI_4-April-2014_A4-2_JFStorm

Dr. Giulio Tononi

School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA

gives a TUTORIAL on his:

Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness (IIT)

Time: Friday, 4 April, kl.11.00-13.45

Sted:  Domus Medica, Gaustad (ved Rikshospitalet)

The tutorial is given for a limited number of selected researchers and students.

If you are interested, please send your application with a short description of your background and interests, within Tuesday 1 April, to: j.f.storm@medisin.uio.no

(For further information, call: 99295763)

Dr. Tononi has developed a radical new theory: The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness (IITC), a scientific theory of what consciousness is, how it can be measured, how it is realized in the brain and why it fades when we fall into dreamless sleep and returns when we dream. The theory, which was recently described by Christof Koch as “the only really promising fundamental theory of consciousness“, is being tested with neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and computer models.

Giulio Tononi is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has held faculty positions in Pisa, New York, San Diego and Madison, Wisconsin, where he is Professor of Psychiatry.

In 2005, Dr. Tononi received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his work on sleep mechanism and function, and in 2008 he was made the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine and is a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science.

Eminent cognitive scientist Stanislas Dehaene is visiting Oslo on November 6, and will give a public lecture on his research into consciousness. The lecture is hosted by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Forum for bevissthetsforskning and SERTA CDAB, and is held at the Litteraturhuset on Wednesday, November 6, 2013, at 2 PM. The lecture will be followed by a discussion between 3 and 5 PM.

Dehaene is professor at the Collège de France, Paris, and director of INSERM Unit 562, “Cognitive Neuroimaging”. He is famous for his work on neural correlates of consciousness, numerical cognition, and the neural basis of reading.

Programme:

Signatures of conscious processing in the human brain
Time:  6 November, 2013, kl. 14.00-16.30
Place:  Møterom Nedjma, 3. etasje, Litteraturhuset, Wergelandsveien 29, Oslo.

14.00 – 14.05 Opening/Welcome, by Professor Kirsti Strøm Bull, President of  The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
14.05– 14.15 Introduction of Stanislas Dehaene by Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiogy, University of Oslo
14.15– 15.15 Lecture by Dr. Stanislas Dehaene: Signatures of conscious processing in the human brain  (60 min)
15.15– 15.30 Coffee break (15 min)
15.30– 16.30 Panel discussion and questions from the audience
Chair:   Nils Chr. Stenseth Professor at the University of Oslo (CEES),
and Vice President of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Panel:
Stanislas Dehaene, Collège de France, Paris
Johan F. Storm, Neurophysiology, Medical Faculty, University of Oslo
Thomas Espeseth, Inst. of Psychology, University of Oslo
Sebastian Watzl, CSMN, Philosophy, University of Oslo

Invitasjon til 2. møte i Forum for bevissthetsforskning:

En samtale med David Chalmers om hjerne og bevissthet.

Tid:  Mandag 26. august 2013, kl.10.15-12.00.
Sted: Auditorium 13, Domus Medica, Gaustad  (like ved Gaustad hotell/Rikshospitalet).

Poster: CHALMERS-MØTE

På dette møtet får vi besøk av den berømte australske filosofen David Chalmers – en av vår tids mest kjente bevissthetsfilosofer.

Chalmers er en av de mest markante og dyptpløyende deltakerne i dagens filosofiske diskusjon om bevissthetens natur.  Han er kjent for sin formulering av “The hard problem of consciousness“, som mange mener er selve kjernespørsmålet: Hvorfor er vår hjernevirksomhet overhode ledsaget at opplevelser, altså av bevisste,  subjektive fornemmelser, følelser og tanker? Hvorfor er vi ikke alle bevisstløse zombier som lever våre live uten å oppleve noe ved det.   Motsatt er de såkalte “easy problems of consciousness“, som er alle de spørsmålene om hjernefunksjoner som kan besvares ved å kartlegge mekanismer, og som hjerneforskning derfor kan studere med sine metoder.

Chalmers  har markert seg som en skarp kritiker av en de dominerende  retningene  i vår tids bevissthetsfilosofi: Fysikalismen – altså ideen at alt er noe fysisk. Han mener fysikalismen er ute av stand til å besvare hvorfor vi har bevisste opplevelser.  I motsetning til de aller fleste andre av dagens filosofer, fremmer Chalmers derfor et dualistisk syn på hjerne og bevissthet, naturalistic dualism , som imidlertid kan sies å ha fellestrekk med blant annet Bertrand Russells nøytrale monisme.  Chalmers har også gitt viktige bidrag til bl.a. tolkning av kvantemekanikkens paradokser.

Møtet er lagt opp som en samtale med Chalmers om hjerne og bevissthet.

Han er invitert til vårt forum av professor Dagfinn Føllesdal. Chalmers  besøker Oslo etter invitasjon av Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, UiO  (CSMN), der han den 27. august kl.16.15  skal holde The CSMN Annual Lecture of Mind in Nature,  2013: Title: “Consciousness and the collapse of the wave function.”  Den 23.-24. august skal han også delta i en Workshop: Panpsychism, Russellian Monism and the Nature of the Physical (Se: http://www.hf.uio.no/csmn/english/research/news-and-events/events/)

Alle er velkommen!

Johan F. Storm,

på vegne av Forum for bevissthetsforskning