ABOUT US

Jorge Sepulcre is faculty member and laboratory director at the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. After completing MD and PhD degrees in his native Spain at the University of Navarra, he moved to Harvard University to continue his research in Neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases. Prof. Sepulcre is known for his contributions in developing cutting-edge connectomic approaches for human brain research. Prof. Sepulcre’s work has been funded by the NIH (National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering) and Alzheimer’s Association.

Georg Northoff is a philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist, holding degrees in all three disciplines. Being originally from Germany, he is now working in Ottawa/Canada where he holds a Canada Research Chair for Mind, Brain Imaging, and Neuroethics. His research focuses on the relationship between brain and mind in its various facets including neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. He is interested in discovering the neuronal mechanisms related to consciousness and self in both healthy subjects and psychiatric disorders like depression and schizophrenia. “The question driving him is: why and how can our brain construct subjective phenomena like self, consciousness, emotions.” He is one of the leading figures in linking philosophy and neuroscience as well as the founder of non-reductive neurophilosophy. He authored more than 270 journal articles and 15 books which are translated into several languages including “Neuro-philosophy and the Healthy Mind” 2016 Norton Publishing, New York, which is also translated into several languages including Italian (Cortina 2019).

All papers etc, can be found on the website: www.georgnorthoff.com

See recent Podcast for broader audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDX3xOVHB18&t=237s

Claudia E. Vanney is the Director of the Philosophy Institute, Professor of Epistemology (Philosophy Institute), Professor of Physics (School of Engineering), and member of the Governing Board of Universidad Austral (Argentina). She has a PhD in Physics (Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2004) and a PhD in Philosophy (Universidad de Navarra, 2007). She was an academic visitor to Universidad de Navarra (Spain), and is a regular visitor to the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford (UK). She has been Principal Investigator of 14 research grants involving scholars in more than a dozen of countries, with special focus in Spanish-speaking ones. Her main research interests refer to interdisciplinary dialogue, including issues in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, and science and religion. In 2017 she received the Expanded Reason Award, an international award that recognizes innovation in scientific research based on Benedict XVI’s proposal to broaden the horizons of reason. Dr Vanney is the editor of Diccionario Interdisciplinar Austral. Ciencias, Filosofía y Teología, and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Zygon, Arbor, Studia Poliana, Naturaleza y Libertad, and Quaerentibus.

Vanney, Claudia

Dr Graham Murray studied Physics and Philosophy at University of Oxford, then Medicine at University of London, graduating with distinction. He completed postgraduate clinical training in psychiatry in Cambridge. He holds two research doctorates, one in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatric brain imaging, from University of London, and one in cognitive developmental epidemiology from University of Oulu in Finland, from where he graduated with distinction. He won successive research fellowships from the UK Department of Health and Medical Research Council, and was then appointed as a University Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. He runs a research group investigating the causes and treatments of mental disorder, and the mechanisms underpinning psychiatric symptoms, especially in psychosis. In his clinical work for the UK National Health Service he works as an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in the Cambridgeshire early intervention in psychosis service, which is called CAMEO.

Dr Sáez studies the neurophysiological basis of human cognition: how the electrical activity generated in the brain underlies thoughts and actions. He does so working with epilepsy patients who require invasive electrode implantation utilising neurosurgical procedures like electrocorticography (ECoG) or stereotaxic EEG (sEEG), which allow direct access to the electrical activity of the brain with high spatial and temporal resolution. The main focus of the laboratory is in the study of decision-making: how we make decisions and learn from their consequences. This is accomplished through the application of computational models, which provide a mathematical explanation of certain elements of behaviour that would be difficult to capture otherwise (e.g., regret). Dr Saez investigates the confluence of decision-making with other areas of cognition (social behaviour, learning and memory, etc.) as well as the implications for pathologies that influence decision-making, such as addiction or depression, using this combination of techniques, with the long-term objective of developing novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of these diseases.

Thomas Fuchs, MD, PhD, is Karl Jaspers Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry at Heidelberg University, Germany. His main areas of research include phenome-nological philosophy and psychopathology, embodied and enactive cognitive science, and interactive concepts of social cognition. He is editor-in-chief of “Psychopathology” and president of the European Association of Phenomenology and Psychopathology.
Recent publication: Ecology of the Brain. The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Guillermo Horga, MD, PhD, is the Florence Irving Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). He is clinically trained as a psychiatrist and completed a PhD program in clinical and experimental neuroscience at the University of Barcelona as well as a postdoctoral research fellowship at Columbia University focused on advanced MRI and cognitive neuroscience methods, mentored by Bradley Peterson and later by Anissa Abi-Dargham. His lab mainly focuses on the neurobiological and computational mechanisms of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and of related cognitive functions in health, including inference, learning and decision-making. Psychosis is characterized by the experience of abnormal percepts, such as hallucinations, and delusional beliefs. While excessive dopamine transmission in the striatum is known to play a role in these symptoms, the cognitive and computational mechanisms mediating psychotic experiences remain unclear. To understand these neural mechanisms, the Horga lab uses behavioral paradigms and computational tools in combination with a variety of functional, structural and molecular in vivo neuroimaging techniques in healthy humans and patients with psychotic disorders. This work is funded through private foundations, including the Dana Foundation, and federal funding from the US NIMH.

Tom Froese is Assistant Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan, where he heads the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit. Originally from Germany, Froese has extensive international experience, having previously worked at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico), the University of Tokyo (Japan), and the University of Sussex (UK). Froese received a DPhil in Cognitive Science from the University of Sussex (UK), an M.Eng. in Computer Science and Cybernetics from the University of Reading (UK), and an IB Bilingual Diploma from the International School Manila (Philippines). His research focuses on the questions at the intersection of life, mind, and sociality, which he explores by integrating concepts and methods from philosophy of mind, artificial life, and human-computer interaction.

Alva Noë is a writer and philosopher living in Berkeley and New York. He is the author of Action in Perception (MIT 2004), Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (FSG 2009), Varieties of Presence (Harvard 2012), Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (FSG, 2015), and Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark (OUP 2019). His next book, Learning to Look: Dispatches from the Art World, is due to be published in 2021. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Center for New Media, the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and the Program in Critical Theory. Noë is a 2012 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2018 recipient of the Judd Hume Prize in Advanced Visual Studies; he has recently been named an Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin, a position he will occupy at least until 2025. From 2011 until 2017 he was a weekly contributor to National Public Radio’s science and culture blog 13.7 Cosmos and Culture.

Marya Schechtman is Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1988. Her main areas of interest are personal identity, philosophy of psychology, bioethics and the philosophy of memory, with interests also in Existentialism and aesthetics. She is the author of The Constitution of Selves and Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life, as well as several articles and essays.

Rafael Yuste is Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for Neurotechnology at Columbia University in New York. He studied medicine at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and after working with Sydney Brenner in Cambridge, he earned a PhD in neurobiology at the Rockefeller University in New York under Larry Katz and Torsten Wiesel. He specialised in biophysics at Bell Labs with David Tank and Winfried Denk.
Yuste is interested in understanding how the cerebral cortex works and how it is damaged in epilepsy and mental illness. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Tallberg Foundation’s Eliasson Global Leadership Award.
Yuste was the primary force behind the Brain Activity Map, which was adopted as the BRAIN initiative by President Obama in 2013 and set in motion the international BRAIN project.
Yuste is actively working on the adoption and implementation of ethical norms for neurotechnology and artificial intelligence (the “NeuroRights”) into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dr. Anna Konova is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Behavioral Health Care, and the Brain Health Institute at Rutgers University. She completed her PhD with Rita Z. Goldstein at Stony Brook University and Mount Sinai, investigating brain imaging markers of cognitive and reward functioning in human addiction and addiction treatment with an emphasis on multi-modal neuroimaging of the structure, function, and connectivity of the brain’s decision-making circuitry. In her postdoctoral research with Paul W. Glimcher at NYU, Dr. Konova used methods from computational and decision neuroscience to investigate the behavioral and neural mechanisms and factors that impede or enhance recovery from substance use. Dr. Konova’s research at Rutgers focuses on risk and resilience factors in addiction escalation, recovery, and treatment. This work combines neuroimaging, computational modeling, and cognitive paradigms to examine how motivated learning and decision making is shaped by contextual and emotional influences that give rise to addictive behavior. Of particular interest are behavioral and neuroimaging markers that can directly inform clinical care and she has most recently approached these questions using intensive longitudinal designs in real-world clinical settings. See more at her lab website: www.konovalab.com.

Arleen Salles, is a Senior Researcher in philosophy at the Center for Research Ethics and Bioethics (CRB) at Uppsala University and Director of the Neuroethics Program at CIF (Centro de Investigaciones Filosoficas) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a tenured professor of philosophy at Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and is also affiliated to Weill Cornell Medical College, (NY, United States). She is the Deputy Leader of the Responsible Research and Innovation Work Package of the EU-flagship Human Brain Project where she is a researcher and leads the task Neuroethics and Engagement. She is also Board member of the International Neuroethics Society and serves as a member of the International Brain Initiative’s Neuroethics Working Group. Salles received her M.A and Ph.D in philosophy from State University of New York at Buffalo, USA.
Her current research focuses on neuroethics, particularly the normative, epistemic, and ontological implications of neuroscientific findings and its applications (including brain inspired artificial intelligence).

Markus Gabriel, born in 1980, studied in Bonn, Heidelberg, Lisbon and New York. He is one of the most prominent representatives of the New Realism in philosophy, which is part of his project for a new illustration. At the age of 29, he became the youngest Professor of Philosophy in Germany.

Since 2009 he has held the chair of epistemology, modern and contemporary philosophy at the University of Bonn, and is the director of the International Center for Philosophy (NRW). He is also director of the Center for Science and Thought, which pursues the interdisciplinary exchange between philosophy and the natural sciences to find productive and sustainable solutions to several of the most pressing issues of our time. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the United States.

Several of his books have been translated into Spanish, including: Why the world does not exist (2015), I am not my brain (2016), Meaning and existence. A realistic ontology (2017), The sense of thought (2019), Neo-existentialism (2020), The power of art (2020) and Ethics for dark times (2021).