Oppenheimer lecture treats enigma of consciousness
Source: Los Alamos Monitor
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2005/08/01/headline_news/news09.txt
Oppenheimer lecture treats enigma of consciousness
August 5, 2005 ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant
Editor
Pioneering neuroscientist Christof Koch will deliver this year's J. Robert
Oppenheimer Memorial Committee lecture.
Koch will speak on "The Quest for Consciousness: a Neurobiological
Approach," at 8 p.m. Monday in the Duane Smith Auditorium in Los Alamos.
Koch is a professor at Caltech and was one of the founders of the field of
computational neuroscience that explores the connection between the mind
and the body, still one of the deepest mysteries in the western
intellectual tradition.
Distinct from philosophical or psychological attempts to resolve the chasm
between the physical substance of the brain and its manifestation as
thought, Koch uses the laboratory and clinical setting, magnetic resonance
imaging and deep electrode probes to see how the brain's neural networks
work in response to visual stimuli.
"I'm interested in the basic science and what it means to be human," he
said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "We need to understand what
consciousness is, if we want a final, complete scientific picture of the
universe.
A recent paper in Nature (June 23), co-authored by Koch, found that a small
packet of neurons in a portion of the brain known as the medial temporal
lobe lights up in recognition of certain people, landmarks, animals and
objects.
Even quite different poses of Jennifer Anniston alone (but not when she was
with Brad Pitt) for example, frequently activated the same subset of
neurons in an individual's brain.
The implication is that the brain may have a highly condensed code for
tagging specific objects, perhaps introducing a way to understand how
visual information is translated into abstract memory.
Koch collaborated with Francis Crick, who is best known for his work with
James Watson in discovering the double helix structure of DNA, for which
they shared the Nobel Prize in 1962. Koch and Crick began publishing papers
together in the 1980's from early neuroscientific experiments at the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
Koch was one of the first researchers to model neurons, before there were
computers.
"He studied how the geometry of neurons was involved in neuron processing,"
said Garret Kenyon a biophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a
member of the Oppenheimer Memorial Committee, sponsoring the event.
"His quest to discover the neural correlate of consciousness focuses on the
visual system to understand visual processing," said Kenyon. He tends to
use vision as his workspace for trying to understand higher-level phenomen,
like consciousness, how we are aware of what we see."
While the computer has become a simplified metaphor for the brain, Koch
sees something different.
"The brain is nothing like the computer, although it is a machine that
takes input and processes output," he said. "But it gives conscious
thoughts, not because there is something magical about the brain in the
sense of non-physical."
Koch said he might not know he has found consciousness until he has found it.
But there are clues in how neurons react to what one sees, whether they
fire or don't fire, if one can predict what excites them or artificially
tickle the neurons into seeing something."
"Right now we're just observing," he said. "It's a question that has
stymied man's brain for 3,000 years."
Koch's talk, which he said would emphasize the physics of consciousness,
will recount his 20-year adventure in developing a scientific understanding
of a profound mental process that continues to elude explanation.
Last year's Oppenheimer lecture speaker, Frank Wilczak, was one of three
physicists who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2004.
George Kennan, I.I. Rabi, Murray Gell-Mann, and Lewis Thomas are among the
notable figures that have spoken in the 34 previous lectures in this series.
The Oppenheimer Memorial Committee is a non-profit, philanthropic
organization that sponsors an annual lecture and scholarships for
college-bound northern New Mexico students to honor the memory of physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2005/08/01/headline_news/news09.txt
Oppenheimer lecture treats enigma of consciousness
August 5, 2005 ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant
Editor
Pioneering neuroscientist Christof Koch will deliver this year's J. Robert
Oppenheimer Memorial Committee lecture.
Koch will speak on "The Quest for Consciousness: a Neurobiological
Approach," at 8 p.m. Monday in the Duane Smith Auditorium in Los Alamos.
Koch is a professor at Caltech and was one of the founders of the field of
computational neuroscience that explores the connection between the mind
and the body, still one of the deepest mysteries in the western
intellectual tradition.
Distinct from philosophical or psychological attempts to resolve the chasm
between the physical substance of the brain and its manifestation as
thought, Koch uses the laboratory and clinical setting, magnetic resonance
imaging and deep electrode probes to see how the brain's neural networks
work in response to visual stimuli.
"I'm interested in the basic science and what it means to be human," he
said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "We need to understand what
consciousness is, if we want a final, complete scientific picture of the
universe.
A recent paper in Nature (June 23), co-authored by Koch, found that a small
packet of neurons in a portion of the brain known as the medial temporal
lobe lights up in recognition of certain people, landmarks, animals and
objects.
Even quite different poses of Jennifer Anniston alone (but not when she was
with Brad Pitt) for example, frequently activated the same subset of
neurons in an individual's brain.
The implication is that the brain may have a highly condensed code for
tagging specific objects, perhaps introducing a way to understand how
visual information is translated into abstract memory.
Koch collaborated with Francis Crick, who is best known for his work with
James Watson in discovering the double helix structure of DNA, for which
they shared the Nobel Prize in 1962. Koch and Crick began publishing papers
together in the 1980's from early neuroscientific experiments at the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
Koch was one of the first researchers to model neurons, before there were
computers.
"He studied how the geometry of neurons was involved in neuron processing,"
said Garret Kenyon a biophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a
member of the Oppenheimer Memorial Committee, sponsoring the event.
"His quest to discover the neural correlate of consciousness focuses on the
visual system to understand visual processing," said Kenyon. He tends to
use vision as his workspace for trying to understand higher-level phenomen,
like consciousness, how we are aware of what we see."
While the computer has become a simplified metaphor for the brain, Koch
sees something different.
"The brain is nothing like the computer, although it is a machine that
takes input and processes output," he said. "But it gives conscious
thoughts, not because there is something magical about the brain in the
sense of non-physical."
Koch said he might not know he has found consciousness until he has found it.
But there are clues in how neurons react to what one sees, whether they
fire or don't fire, if one can predict what excites them or artificially
tickle the neurons into seeing something."
"Right now we're just observing," he said. "It's a question that has
stymied man's brain for 3,000 years."
Koch's talk, which he said would emphasize the physics of consciousness,
will recount his 20-year adventure in developing a scientific understanding
of a profound mental process that continues to elude explanation.
Last year's Oppenheimer lecture speaker, Frank Wilczak, was one of three
physicists who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2004.
George Kennan, I.I. Rabi, Murray Gell-Mann, and Lewis Thomas are among the
notable figures that have spoken in the 34 previous lectures in this series.
The Oppenheimer Memorial Committee is a non-profit, philanthropic
organization that sponsors an annual lecture and scholarships for
college-bound northern New Mexico students to honor the memory of physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
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