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.

Somehow, when we turn our head we know that the world stands still, and it is us who turn our visual perception of it. But what brain structures are precisely involved in such complex understanding? Brain anatomist Björn Merker discusses his studies of the multi-modal sensori-motor system, and the possible brain structures and mappings that facilitate control over it. He introduces his idea of a multiple, convergent funnel structure, and discusses with Paul Verschure the notion of some functional 'bubble' that produces a best estimate for both sensory and motor sides, within the time window of an eye's saccade.About the lecturerBjörn Merker lives in Sweden and has published several papers and books both autonomously, and affiliated to academic institutes like the Royal University College of Music. Stockholm, and the Institute for Biomusicology at Mid Sweden University, Östersund. He is known in the field as a strong advocate of a neural architecture producing consciousness in other areas than the thalamo-cortical one (the forebrain). Besides the neural substrate of consciousness, his interest are in the biological basis of music in humans and other primates, large scale neuronal theories of brain function, and countercurrent modeling of cortical memory.

To study the modeling of action and behavior of organisms like humans, and of their brains, it is important to include the question why certain actions are undertaken. Some of what we do is driven by habits, other actions are driven by goals. Matthew Botvinick (University of Princeton, USA) discusses his view on the relations between causation, enabling action elements, rewards, danger, optimal policies, and the evolutionary notion of 'good enough'. An important recurrent issue, is that of implementation. What brain architectures facilitate state representations, functional relationships, and predictions about the world around an organism?About the lecturerHe is leading Professor at the Botvinick Lab, Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Departement of Psychology. His research interest focuses on the cognitive neuroscience of higher-level visual functions, perceptual learning, and recovery of visual function following focal brain lesions or after treatment of ophthalmologic disease.

Adrian Owen (University of Cambridge, Medical Research Council, UK) and his colleagues have shown that with some people in vegetative states, or that have locked-in syndrome, can be communi-cated, using brain wave techniques. What could this achievement mean for our notion of consciousness, and the way we deal with it in society?About the lecturerAdrian Owen is Associate Lecturer at University of Cambridge and assistant director at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the Medical Research Council. His research combines functional neuroimaging (fMRI, PET, EEG), with neuropsychological studies in brain-injured patients and healthy volunteers, and revolves around three interrelated themes: attention, memory and control.

The current definition of what consciousness is, is unsatisfactory according to Victor Lamme. He proposes to put aside the emphasis on the descriptions from introspection and psychology, and build a new definition from a neuroscientific perspective. This approach could offer a more thorough way to assess the 'grey zone' between the polar states of being completely conscious, and being completely unconscious, like during coma. The approach also offers a method to disambiguate the role of attention in tasks associated with more or less conscious states. With Paul Veschure Lamme discusses his views with respect to his research on change blindness and subconscious recognition, and role of the feed-forward recurrent connectivity architectures, which make him a critic of global workspace proposals. Lamme thinks that it is fundamentally impossible to know what exactly someone else is conscious of at a certain moment. He expects that the contribution of experimentation will show that the neural argument of recurrence will prove an essential prerequisite for consciousness phenomena.

About the lecturerVictor Lamme is professor at the University of Amsterdam. He studies visual consciousness to understand how we process visual information. This is –sometimes– accompanied by a sensation: we see. What brain mechanisms make that happen?