Speaker：

Dr. Vishal Kapoor

Abstract：

An empirical approach proposed for studying consciousness has been to investigate the neural correlates of conscious vision. To this end, neurophysiologists have probed single neurons in primates while they participate in paradigms which elicit fluctuations in conscious visual perception. This talk will introduce this approach and summarize the findings from such experiments aimed at addressing a central debate in the field of consciousness research, namely the role of the prefrontal cortex. These experiments revealed that prefrontal activity reflects changes in conscious perception and conscious contents can be decoded from the activity of prefrontal ensembles.

BIO： 

Dr. Vishal Kapoor is an Investigator and head of the Laboratory of Neural Dynamics of Visual Perception and Cognition at the International Center for Primate Brain Research, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Tuebingen, Germany for the research he conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, where he subsequently continued his postdoctoral work. The research in his lab employs a multi-modal approach and combines psychophysical paradigms and behavior with electrophysiological, imaging, and computational approaches to study the neural basis of conscious visual perception and disambiguate these neural processes from those underlying cognition.