QBI Neuroscience Seminar: 'The conscious phenotype'

Event Details

Date:

Thursday, 01 November 2018 - Thursday, 01 November 2018

Time:

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Room:

QBI Level 7 Auditorium

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Professor Geraint Rees FMedSci
Dean of the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK
Title: 'The conscious phenotype'
Abstract:
Consciousness is central to the human condition, furnishing us with phenomenal awareness of the external world and the ability to reflect upon our own thoughts and experiences. Almost half our communication concerns the contents of our thoughts and experiences. The shared language we use to do this obscures the more recent realisation that there is substantial variability in how different people experience the same physical environment. Moreover, key aspects of this variability in conscious experience are heritable, suggesting a conscious phenotype with adaptive significance. In this talk I will explore the nature of individual differences in conscious perception and their neural basis, focusing on both structure and function of the human brain. Such a methodological orientation leads naturally to approaches to explaining behaviour and brain function that appreciate its high dimensionality. I will describe the consequences of such dimensionality, both for understanding the brain and its disorders but also for my own research programme.