During his long and distinguished career, Michael Arbib (University of Southern California, USA) studied a wide variety of aspects that have to do with the relation between vision, and action. One aspect of his work focuses on the theory of perceptual schemas, a theoretical model to address what goes in between the psychological level of action and behavior in a world, and the lower levels of neural processing. With Tony Prescott and Paul Veschure he discusses the important limitations computational modeling has with respect to how behavior is effectively implemented in neuronal structures. Another key turn in his research came with the discovery of mirror neurons, which are neurons that fire not only in relation to action of the animal itself, but also to the perception of the performance of that action by other animals. From research on the localization of mirror neuron systems in human brains Arbib c.s. found, that our current language system has probably evolved from brain areas that generated and controlled gestures. This calls to view what we now call human language from a much larger perspective than one of speech or writing alone. In the view of Arbib it also calls to apply a framework of study that focuses not only on the processing of neurons in an isolated individual, but also to the embedding of it in social and cultural structures of the present, and the past of evolution.

About the lecturerMichael Arbib is Professor in Computer Science, Neurobiology, Physiology, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Psychology at the University of Southern California, Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, and director of the USC Brain Project. The core of Michael Arbib's work is expressed in the title of his first book, Brains, Machines and Mathematics (McGraw-Hill, 1964). He has written or edited more than 40 books on these topics since. His career is based on the argument that we can learn much about machines from studying brains, and much about brains from studying machines. He has thus always worked for an interdisciplinary environment in which computer scientists and engineers can talk to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists.

The 'Evo-Devo' approach to the study of the brain's structure, pivots around the notion of competition. Evolution theory since Darwin has built upon the principal idea of regularities and variations of body part shapes, that compete over function in changing environments, and are either kept or discarded as a consequence of success. Terence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley) connects this idea to both the evolution, and the development of the brain, and argues that the way brain development during an animal's life has evolved over ages has resulted in the specific forms and function of brain parts on one hand, and on the other in the relative similarity of formal and functional brain organization amongst different species. He introduces the notion of an essential competition of neuron connections in the final stages of brain development, one that is staged by genes that code for different functional brain areas. With Paul Verschure he discusses theoretical and experimental aspects of such a notion, and illustrates it with his research on parkinson patients that involved the transplantation of embryonic pig brain tissue into the affected human brain areas. In the final part, he introduces his current research ideas on evolution and the origins of life, from a perspective beyond self-replicating mechanisms that use DNA and RNA, and even away from molecular replication we can find on earth.

About the lecturerTerence Deacon is Professor in Biological Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of California Berkley, USA. His interests combine human evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. His research 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.

Increasingly complex brains lead to more complex behavior, in which it becomes impossible to assess its functionality by looking at local parts alone. Leah Kubitzer (University of California, Davis, USA) has focused in her research on brain structure complexity, on how it can develop from simpler architectures, how modular structures emerge, and can be compared between species. Manipulation during brain development stages has offered her and her team the opportunity to study the influence on the behavior of animals by changing the number of anatomical parts, the size of cortical fields and connectivity between them. With Tony Prescott and Paul Verschure she discusses her findings, and current developments in a science that in her view desperately needs a larger framework to operate in.About the lecturerLeah Krubitzer heads the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Krubitzer is also a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at UC Davis. She takes a broad interest in the function, connectivity, development, and evolution of complex nervous systems, like the primate somatosensory system, and the evolution of complex brains in mammals.