Colloquium
Time: 11:00am, June 3, 2025
Venue: Lecture Hall, Shanghai Brain Center
Speaker: Dr. Georg Northoff
Mind,Brain lmaging and Neuroethics
The Royal's Institute of Mental Health Research,Canada
Host：Prof. Nikos Logothetis
Biography:
Georg Northoff is a philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist, holding degrees in all three disciplines. He works in Ottawa/Canada holding a Canada Research Chair for Mind, Brain Imaging, and Neuroethics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His research focuses on the relationship between brain and mind. The question driving him is:"why and how can our brain construct mental features like self, consciousness, etc." To address the brain-mind relationship he developed his novel and unique Spatiotemporal Neuroscience and Psychopathology where time-space are shared by brain and mind. He is also one of the leading figures in linking philosophy, psychiatry, and neuroscience having developed non-reductive neurophilosophy and the world-brain relation as answer to the mind-body problem. He authored over 400 journal articles and 20 books which are translated into several languages including "Neuro-philosophy and the Healthy Mind" (2016) Norton Publisher, and "Neurowaves" (McGill”) (2023)
All papers and various talks can be found on his website:www.georgnorthoff.com
See recent Podcast on Spatiotemporal Neuroscience for broader audience:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDX3xOVHB18&t=237s
See recent book "Neurowaves" for broader audience:https://www.mqup.ca/neurowaves-products-9780228017615.php
Abstract:
One key feature of the brain's dynamics is its Intrinsic Neural Timescales. While it is well known that the brain exhibits a wide range of different timescales, their role remains yet unclear. Why and how does the brain constitute such different timescales? What purpose do they serve in our behavior and mental states? My talk aims to shed novel light on these questions by converging three lines of investigation including brain imaging (fMRI,EEG), psychological-behavioral data, and computational modeling. I will show corresponding and shared timescales in neural and mental features as their "common currency". Using computational modeling, next, I demonstrate evidence that timescales are, in part, mediated by intra-regional recurrent connections and neural excitation. I conclude that the brain's timescales are a strong candidate to temporally structure and organize our behavior and its mental states.