Where is the Consciousness Brain Region?

Elisa Clement published a new article in the AR Magazine from Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon - Portugal. 

Most scholars consider consciousness to have two components: wakefulness and awareness. Wakefulness is fairly easy to define and measure experimentally, through EEG, because the pattern of activity shown by EEG is different in brains of awake subjects, compared to subjects who are asleep.

www.gregadunn.com

Awareness, on the other hand, is neither easy to assess, nor to define – what exactly does it mean to be “aware” of your surroundings? Are there different stages or levels of awareness? Are there any other more accurate and objective ways of assessing awareness other than through questionnaires filled in by subjects, which is how it is often assessed?

But the most crucial and interesting question yet to be answered is the following: is consciousness generated through the orchestrated activation of multiple brain areas, or is there one particular area responsible for it?

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships

An interesting opportunity for research scholarship starting at 2019 is available to post-graduate researchers that are planning to go to Switzerland to do research at doctoral or post-doctoral level. Only candidates nominated by an academic mentor will be considered and must be born after 1982.

Each year the Swiss Confederation awards Government Excellence Scholarships to promote international exchange and research cooperation between Switzerland and over 180 other countries. Recipients are selected by the awarding body, the Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS).

The University of Geneva that includes the BCI groups "Electrical Neuroimaging Group" and "Affective Computing and Multimodal Interaction Group" is one of the selected educational institutions.

Additional allowances:

• The scholarship amounts to a monthly payment of CHF 1,920;
• Scholarship holders from outside continental Europe receive a flight allowance (lump sum) for a ticket back to their country of origin (provided at the end of the scholarship);
• Special CHF 300 housing allowance (paid once at the beginning of the scholarship).

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Learning with BCIs - from Prof. Aaron Batista

A very interesting 30 minutes presentation about BCI / Machine Learning and NeuroScience explained by Professor Aaron Batista.

When we learn, the brain changes at nearly every level of organization. Synapses form and strengthen, individual neurons change their tuning properties, and cortical maps expand. My research examines how learning alters the coordinated activity of populations of neurons. This is a particularly important level at which to study learning because it is the action of populations of neurons that drive behavior, generate perceptions, and undergird our cognition.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.