The Scientists:
 
Professor Walter J. Freeman has taught neuroscience at the Universityof California, Berkeleyfor 50 years and is the head of its Neurophysiology Lab and Laboratory for Nonlinear Neurodynamics. A medical doctor, mathematician and philosopher, he conducted pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of perception. He argues that everything we know is constructed by brain dynamics. Brains are not fixed, hard-wired organs, a sort of black box with stimuli going in and out. They are dynamic systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment and with each other. His numerous publications include Societies of Brains and How Brains Make up Their Minds.


Professor Maurice Ptito teaches at the Université de Montréal School of Optometry, where he holds the prestigious Harland Sanders Research Chair in Vision Sciences. Dividing his time between Denmarkand Quebec, he is engaged in prolific research on development and plasticity of the visual system in humans and animals. Carrying on the revolutionary though long-disparaged work of Paul Bach-y-Rita (who died in 2007), he is experimenting with an electro-tactile device that enables congenitally blind subjects to “see” with their tongues.

 
Lionel Naccache is a neurologist at Pitié-SalpêtrièreHospitalin Parisand a researcher in cognitive neuroscience with the INSERM Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit in Orsay. His clinical and scientific practice focus on researching the foundations of consciousness and investigating consciousness disorders in his patients. He is the author of the acclaimed book Le Nouvel Inconscient (“The New Unconscious,” 2006).


Professor Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is a neurologist and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universityof California, San Diego. Dubbed “the Marco Polo of neuroscience,” he brings great practical sense and creativity to his field of study and has had remarkable success with elegantly simple treatment methods, such as visual feedback for resolving pain in phantom limbs or accelerating recovery after paralysis from stroke. He also does work on autism. Questioning the fixed modular approach to brain function, he argues that the functions are in a state of dynamic equilibrium, a radical new approach that has a profound impact on our understanding of consciousness disorders and mental disorders. He is the author of Phantoms in the Brain and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.  


Dr. Bruno van Swinderen ran a research lab for nine years at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, where he studied mechanisms of perception and cognition in fruit flies and how they are affected by phenomena such as selective attention, sleep and general anaesthesia. He is currently pursuing the same line of research in his Visual Perception Laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia.