London NPSA/UCL Lecture Series

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Professor Mark Solms

Professor Mark Solms is a psychoanalyst, neuroscientist and author. He was the founder, together with Jaak Panksepp, of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, and he is Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

For questions, please contact Dr John Hook
johnjlh52@gmail.com

Abstract:  The mind/body problem has been divided into two parts. The ‘easy’ part is to identify the neural correlates of consciousness: what brain processes are active during conscious versus unconscious mental processes? The ‘hard’ part is to explain how these processes cause consciousness: how do the physical events turn into experiences? This is widely considered to be the hardest question facing neuroscience today, if not all science. I will address the question in two parts. First I will focus on the neuroscientific and psychological aspects of the problem. I will suggest that we have been looking for the neural correlates of consciousness in the wrong part of the brain and that we have been looking at the wrong type of consciousness. Then I will focus on the philosophical and mechanistic aspects of the problem. I will conclude with this issue: if we really do understand the causal mechanism of consciousness, now, can we engineer it artificially?

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