Seminars are open to all visitors and start Monday at 16:00 sharp. Coffee and tea will be served from 15:45. The seminar series lectures are in a colloquiumzaal at the third floor (entrance level) of the Faculty building of Erasmus MC.
Christof Koch
The Neurobiology of Consciousness: What do we know and what do we need to know
| 2009-06-22 | Room: Ae 406 |
Half a century ago, many did not think it was possible to understand the secret of life. Then Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, forever changing biology. We are now once again facing a similar pursuit in determining the material basis of consciousness. How does the unmistakable smell of dogs after they have been in the rain, or the awfulness of a throbbing tooth pain, emerge from networks of neurons and their associated synaptic processes? I will summarizes what is known about the neurobiology of consciousness, outline the limits to our knowledge, and describe ongoing experiments using visual illusions to manipulate the relationship between physical stimuli and their associated conscious percepts and to discover and characterize the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC). I will conclude by discussing a very promising theoretical approach to consciousness (Balduzzi & Tononi 2008), grounded in circuit complexity and information theory.