A brain that produces consciousness most probably is a complex brain. But how can you quantify the assessment of such a statement, how can you measure complexity in structure and activity? Marcello Massimini (University of Milan, Italy) assesses the brain as a structure that is integrated, and at the same time differentiated. Together with Paul Verschure he discusses the possibilities and limitations of measurement techniques like TMS, EEG, and fMRI, as well as the meaningfulness of the data these techniques can produce. He presents a pragmatical approach, a rough appraisal of a brain's dynamical state, rather than an assessment of from what kind of activity consciousness does emerge.About the lecturerMarcello Massimini is professor in neurophysiology at the University of Milan. He has performed in vivo intracellular recordings to study the mechanisms of sleep slow oscillations (Mircea Steriade's lab, Laval University, Canada) and has accumulated a vast experience in human basic and clinical electrophysiology (evoked potentials, polysomnography and hd-EEG during wakefulness and sleep). During the last two years Dr. Massimini has been testing the first commercially available TMS/EEG system (Nexstim. Ltd.) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison with Prof. Giulio Tononi.

Several theories of how the brain can produce consciousness have been proposed, amongst which the Global Workspace theory. Melanie Boly (Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research) approaches the evaluation of such theories from a clinical perspective: what can we actually measure and compare between patients that are in different states of consciousness? What differs, or correlates in terms of behavioral capabilities as well as brain functionality, between person in a vegetative state, in a coma, a minimally conscious state, or someone that is fully awake? The research of her team moved from looking from a global perspective on brain behavior and the connectivity involved with consciousness, towards a particular interest in the differences that occur in frontal and parietal brain areas. With Paul Verschure she discusses the need to aim multiple different approaches for the measurement of consciousness, like techniques combining clinical observation and physiology, towards similar theoretical paradigms. Especially for the appropriate diagnosis of a patient's state such questions are highly relevant, because it defines a meaningful terminology for indices, tags, and the associated levels of particular functionality.About the lecturerMelanie Boly is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research and Neurologist in training at the University Hospital CHU Sart Tilman under Prof. Gustave Moonen. Her current research is on the assessment of cerebral responses to pain in individual non-communicative patients, and their relationships with the patients' behavioural responses as evaluated using standardized clinical scales.

Neuroimaging has developed as a powerful tool to visualize data that describes what happens in the living brain. Allard Roebrock (University of Maastricht, NL) discusses how these achievements could be taken beyond the mere pointing towards presumed functional areas, and taken towards causal, and computational inferences. As these tools become increasingly more complex and specialist, how can scientists, and other users in our community make effective use of them?About the lecturerAllard Roebrock is assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. His research focuses on functional and anatomical connectivity.

The current study of the brain faces a paradox: neuroscience produces an enormous amount of data, but there is surprisingly little integrated framework to fit the dispersed, and heterogeneous data collections together. Inspired by the human genome project, a group of scientists, amongst whom Partha Mitra (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA), have started working on a framework to resolve some of this paradox, and integrate the large amounts of sometimes over-specialized data at a lower but shared resolution, over a more global scale at the level of mesocircuitry. Originally a theoretical physicist, Mitra finds himself turning to modesty in the face of neuro-anatomatical practice, and discusses with Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott the challenges such an ambitious project faces. One of the recommendations he makes, is to take the knowledge coming from (re)building neurocircuitry as emerging from engineering practices much more seriously, with respect to what it can reveal about the functional and evolutionary history of brain areas. Another recommendation is to accept a plurality of theories to apply to explain particular single phenomena, which is a view that deviates from ones characterizing his background in physics.

About the lecturerPartha Mitra is currently the principal investigator at the Mitra Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. The interests of the lab fall into three main areas: Neuroinformatics, Theoretical Engineering and Quantitative Behavior & Electrophysiology.

The connectome, as developed by Olaf Sporns and his colleagues (University of Indiana, USA), offers a description of the human brain from the perspective of a dynamic, multilayered network. It tries to map the anatomy as well as the structural organization of the brain's dynamic nature, and does so by incorporating views from physics and economy, like expressed in e.g. Graph Theory. The dynamic network approach has also brought new terms and concepts, that address the brain as an architecture of interconnected modules, and hubs, besides that of neurons. With Paul Verschure Olaf Sporns discusses the limitations of the techniques applied to build and quantify such a network model, as well as the fundamental limitations of abstract modeling itself with respect to real brains, in a real world. For the future, Olav Sporns sees the mapping of 'the' brain challenged by multiple individual factors, like the apparent anatomical differences between people given similar behavior, and the enormous changes in connectivity that appear to occur during youth and adolescence.

About the lecturerOlaf Sporns is Professor and Associate Department Chair at Indiana University. His focus is in the area of computational cognitive neuroscience. Specifically, functional integration and binding in the cortex, neural models of perception and action, network structure and dynamics, applications of information theory to the brain, and embodied cognitive science using robotics.