Download - Berlin School of Mind and Brain

ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY AND NEUROSCIENCE
VENICE, 17-21 APRIL 2011
1

Contents
Program schedule……………………………………3
Abstracts………………………………………………..6
List of participants………………………….….…19
Accommodation…………………………………….21
3

PANEL 1: CONSCIOUSNESS I
Program
Monday, April 18 th
Chairs: Prof. Michael Pauen and Georgina Torbet
9:00 - 9:25
9:25 - 9:50
9:50 - 10:15
On the Influence of the Brain on the Brain: Be “Aware”!
(Sebastian Philipp)
Meditation…? Questions for Neuroscientists
(Arun Singh)
10:15 - 10:30 BREAK
PANEL 2: CONSCIOUSNESS II
The Role of Neuroscientific Findings in Ascribing
Intentional States (Joachim Lipski)
Chairs: Prof. Arno Villringer and Bianca van Kemenade
10:30 - 10:55
The Mystery of the Internal Clock, or What do we Know
about Time Perception? (Sophie Herbst)
10:55 - 11:20 Hypnosis as and Neuroscience (Vera Ludwig)
11:20 - 11:45
11:45 - 13:30 LUNCH
13:30
afternoon
Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches to Freudian Repression
(Georgina Torbet)
Boat to Venice
Sightseeing with an organized tour; details tba
4

PANEL 3: ETHICS
Tuesday, April 19 th
Chairs: Prof. Benedikt Grothe and Emiliano Zaccarella
9:00 - 9:25
9:25 - 9:50
Ethical Issues in Human-Robot Interaction
(Aleksandra Kupferberg)
Neuroscientific Research on Moral Judgement
(David Kaufmann)
9:50 - 10:15 Neuroscience and Morality (Judy Ng)
10:15 - 10:30 BREAK
PANEL 4: SENSE PERCEPTION I
Chairs: Prof. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl and Alexander Soutschek
10:30 - 10:55
10:55 - 11:20
Color Vision: From the Outside World via the Cortex to
Consciousness (Christian Kellner)
Recurrent Neural Processing in Somatosensory Awareness
(Ryszard Auksztulewicz)
11:20 - 11:45 Multisensory Integration (Bianca van Kemenade)
11:45 - 13:30 LUNCH
PANEL 5: SENSE PERCEPTION II
Chair: PD Dr. Stephan Sellmaier and Ellen Fridland
13:30 - 13:55
Orientation Encoding in the FFA is Selective to Faces:
Evidence from Multivoxal Pattern Analysis (Fernando
Ramirez)
13:55 - 14:20 Naturalized Epistemology (Alexander Soutschek)
5

Wedesday, April 19 th
PANEL 6: WILL AND DECISION MAKING
Chairs: Prof. Michael Pauen and Ryszard Auksztulewicz
9:00 - 9:25
9:25 - 9:50
The Role of the Brain in Impulsivity and Self-Control
(Saskia Köhler)
Building Blocks in Human Decision Making and Cognitive
Control (Roland Nigbur)
9:50 - 10:15 Drosophila and Cognitive Functions (Armin Bahl)
10:15 - 10:30 BREAK
PANEL 7: CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
Chairs: Prof. Benedikt Grothe and Judy Ng
10:30 - 10:55 Optogenetics (Barbara Trattner)
10:55 - 11:20
11:20 - 11:45
11:45 - 13:30 LUNCH
PANEL 8: LANGUAGE
Reduction of Inter-hemispheric Connectivity in Disorders
of Consciousness (Smadar Ovadia-Caro)
The Neural Effects of Alcohol Bias Modification Training
(Corinde Wiers)
Chairs: Prof. Arno Villringer and Aleksandra Kupferberg
13:30 - 13:55
CLOSING SESSION
On the Nature of Merge: Neuroanatomical Correlates of
Local Syntactic Structures in Natural Language Processing
(Emiliano Zaccarella)
6

Aleksandra Kupferberg
Abstracts
Ethical Issues in Human-Robot Interaction
Despite tremendous usefulness and great social benefits gained by integrating robots as
helpers and interaction partners into human environments, there are a number of
important ethical problems involved in such developments. These problems require
careful consideration and analyses from a perspective of applied ethics, since ethical
problems will be noticeable in cases where robots are used in everyday and intimate
settings such as the education sector, personal assistance duties and the elderly care. In
such settings, the tendency of humans to see their interactions with machines in
anthropomorphic terms will be increased and people might develop affection towards
machines e.g. because of similarities in personality and knowledge and also affection
shown by the robot towards the human. Another problem might arise in case that a robot
is given two conflicting orders by two different humans. Whom should it obey? Who
should carry the responsibility for a failure in a joint human-robot task? A different issue
deals with the question whether it is ethically and morally responsible to manufacture
robot workers and androids, since the argument is that robot workers take jobs from
human workers. In which way will humanity be transformed if the dangerous,
monotonous and hazardous work will be performed by robots and the expectations of
humans will increase towards other humans? The consequences of introduction of robots
in human environments will also increase the percentages of his/her life interfacing with
machines instead of real humans. Therefore, ethics must do empirical research to
examine what counts as a good life in the environment that encompasses both humans
and robotic companions.
Alexander Soutschek
Naturalized Epistemology: Can empirical science help to answer traditional
epistemological questions?
In traditional philosophy, epistemological questions are investigated by conceptual
analyses and a priori arguments. For example, the sceptical question of whether
knowledge of the external world is possible shall be answered by analysing our intuitive
concepts of knowledge and reality. In contrast to that program, naturalized epistemology
assumes that the modern empirical sciences like psychology or the neurosciences can
explain better than philosophy how the human mind works and how it gains knowledge
about its environment. In consequence, epistemology should give up its traditional project
of a conceptual analysis of knowledge and stick to the results of empirical sciences
instead. In my talk, I will deal with the question whether naturalized epistemology really
can find an answer to traditional epistemological problems like scepticism.
7

Armin Bahl
Smarter than One Might Think: Drosophila as a model for higher cognitive
functions
In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, electrophysiological and imaging techniques as
well as neuronal genetic modifications can be combined at the same time in the behaving
animal. It is that recent fusion of well-established toolsets that makes the fly one of the
most popular model organisms for the study of developmental biology, brain physiology,
neuronal computation and behavior today (Olsen & Wilson, 2010, Seelig et al., 2010). The
Drosophila brain has less than a cubic square millimeter in size and approximately
300.000 nerve cells. Brains of higher organisms like humans have more than 300.000
times more nerve cells and are more than 2 million times larger. These numbers could
lead to the belief that the fly’s behavioral repertoire should be small and of only minor
interest for human neurobiology. But despite their small brains flies do have amazing
abilities, they possess, for example, an elaborated memory and can be trained to associate
colors with objects or odors (Brembs & Heisenberg, 2001). Using visual cues they also
build up spatial memories allowing them to quickly navigate towards a target spot whose
location had be learned before (Foucaud et al., 2010). A well-studied topic in
psychophysics is attention and saliency, which is normally attributed only to higher
organisms but it was shown that the ability to attend to a salient object is also present in
flies (Wolf & Heisenberg, 1980). There is an ongoing debate on whether the freedom of
will might be an illusion and that behaviour instead of being self-initiated is always
deterministic with variability coming from internal or external noise (Heisenberg 2009).
However there are evidences from research in Drosophila that the manoeuvres during
flight might be self-initiated by internal noise-independent mechanisms (Maye et al.,
2007). These examples demonstrate that Drosophila has a long list of exciting and
elaborated abilities and therefore makes it an interesting model organism also for
research in human cognition, physiology and psychology. In combination with the
experimental possibilities in flies it is now possible to tackle the neural basis of these
behaviors which might shed light on the neural representation of learning, attention and
will - might it be free or not.
Arun Singh
Meditation…? Questions for Neuroscientists
Generally, the aim of meditation is modulation of awareness. Any effort free from
distraction of the mind may work as effective meditation. There are two different
meditation categories: concentrative, and non-concentrative. It may be integrated into a
specific spiritual context, but is by itself not specific to religion in general. It includes an
approach to manage stress, anxiety, headache, and daily physical pain complaints. Since
1960, more than 1000 research articles have been published trying to explain the benefits
of meditation. Richard Davidson and Dalai Lama have investigated the effects of
meditation on the brain. For example, one of Davidson’s studies found that long-term
meditators showed high amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. All of his
studies imply that intensive meditation results in both functional as well as structural
changes in the brain regions. Investigations performed by Lazar et al have demonstrated
that mediation can increase the density of grey matter and cortical thickness. Meditation
has also been related to alterations of sensory perception, as well as metabolic changes,
e.g. of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration. Given scientific evidence has proved to be
beneficial for mental and physical health, but there is much more left to be yet understood
by neuroscientists.
8

Barbara Trattner
Optogenetics
Optogenetics is an elegant emerging method in neuroscience, which exploits optical and
genetic tools to precisely control neuronal brain circuits in living animals at a high
temporal and spatial resolution. Generally neuronal properties are investigated with the
help of selective pharmacological agents targeting certain neuronal structures. These
agents are however disadvantageous in that they have a systemic action, are temporally
imprecise and may cause unspecific side-effects. In addition to replacing pharmacology,
optogenetic approaches can also substitute electrical stimulation of a neuronal population
for defined light-gated activation. Photosensitive proteins can be artificially expressed in
neurones to alter their firing properties and thereby information processing. By exposing
only a certain brain area to light, only the activity of those neurones will be modulated by
the photosensitive proteins. Due to the immense possibilities that optogenetics offer in
elucidating neuronal brain circuits, it was selected the method of the year 2010 by the
prestigious scientific journal Nature Methods. The principle of using optogenetics was
first found around 2000, when photosensitive proteins were expressed in neurones, which
could thereby be sensitised to light. Further research in the field of optogenetics led to the
implementation of genetically-encoded bacterial and algeal photosensitive ion channels
and pumps in neurones. Depending on the properties of these ion transporters, they can
either hyperpolarise or depolarise neurones. An advantage of using photosensitive ion
transporters to targeting endogenous channels with drugs is the fast time constant: Upon
illumination with the correct wavelength, photosensitive channels open and close in the
range of milliseconds. A lot of research is currently going on to develop new artificial
light-gated ion channels or receptors. With the help of tissue-specific promoters, these
proteins can be expressed only in a certain neuronal subgroup or at a confined
developmental stage.
Precisely choosing the brain area, which is exposed to light, allows the further refinement
of the subgroup of modulated neurones. By expressing photosensitive proteins in a
subclass of neurones responsible for a defined behaviour, researchers can nowadays
control behaviour by exciting or inhibiting only those neurones with light. Flies for
instance can learn that a certain odour is aversive when the odour is paired with the lightgated
activation of a certain receptor class. Mice can be woken up when a certain neuronal
population of the hypothalamus, artificially expressing photosensitive proteins, are
stimulated with light.
The therapeutic aim of optogenetics for humans is to restore vision after a degeneration of
photoreceptor cells in the retina. In mice it was shown that equipping retinal neurones
with photosensitive proteins from microbes using a viral delivery can restore visual
responses. In humans this approach is currently investigated in inherited retinal
dysfunctions: In Leber’s congenital amaurosis patient lack a certain pigment protein of
the retina. Subretinal administration of viral vectors encoding the absent pigment, lead to
a long-lasting improvement in vision perception. However optogenetic treatments are not
yet standard in the therapy of blindness, mainly due to the fact that viral gene transfer
bears many risks.
9

Bianca van Kemenade
Multisensory Integration
Our senses are constantly bombarded with information from the different modalities. In
order to interact with our environment in an appropriate manner, we have to select which
information is most important. In the process of integrating this information to give rise
to a conscious percept, the different modalities can influence each other: our conscious
perception of a stimulus in one modality can be influenced by a stimulus in another
modality. This process is often referred to as multisensory integration, or cross-modal
processing. Multisensory integration is a broad topic that covers a wide range of research;
therefore I will select some of the most important findings. I will introduce some
interesting illusions, discuss some studies on the neural mechanisms underlying
multisensory integration, and cover some patient studies. With this overview I would like
to introduce this fascinating topic to other scientists working in different fields.
Christian Kellner
Color Vision: From the outside world via the cortex to consciousness
Color and color vision has always been a topic that fascinated scholars, ranging from
Dalton's research of color blindness over Goethe's "Theory of Color" to the "dispute"
between the trichromatic theory of Young–Helmholtz theory and the opponent process
theory of Hering. Color (vision) also became a highly debated topic in the Philosophy of
mind with the problem of "qualia" (and its suggested consequence of the "explanatory
gap").
At the core of a lot of those problems lies the fundamental question of the relationship
between the outside (physical) world and the subjective personal experience. Of course,
nowadays neuroscientists believe that the link is made via the brain. Though (color) vision
is a field that has undergone intensive research by neuroscientists, there are of course
some yet fundamental but unsolved problems; two famous ones are the problem of
dichromats ("what do 'color blind' people see") and the problem of unique hues (the
elementary chromatic hues: red, green, yellow & blue) and their (still missing) neuronal
correlates.
I will mainly focus on the current state of the latter problem and if there is time/space left
I will also try to present some new insights about the problem of color blindness.
10

Corinde Wiers
The Neural Effects of Alcohol Bias Modification Training
The pathology of alcoholism is associated with maladaptive attention- and approach
biases towards substance-related stimuli, i.e. the tendency of alcoholic patients to
approach rather than avoid these stimuli, even though they are not rationally inclined to.
From animal studies it is known that limbic areas are structurally and functionally altered
after long-term drinking, but the neural mechanisms of alcohol biases in humans remain
largely unknown. In this talk I present my currently ongoing research, in which I use fMRI
and EEG to study brain regions involved in these biases in alcoholic patients. My
hypothesis is that limbic brain activity predicts performance on a computerised alcohol
bias task. My next step is to understand how bias modification training, a promising
intervention in which patients selectively learn to avoid rather than approach stimuli,
modulates the brain and may prevent relapse. Finally I talk about how neuroimaging can
be of use for the treatment of alcohol addiction directly.
11

David Kaufmann
Neuroscientific Research on Moral Judgement
In my research project at GSN I intend to investigate the overt and covert philosophical
conceptual premises of the neuroscientific approach to investigating moral judgement and
the importance of these premises for interpreting neuroscientific results in philosophical
terms as well as in ordinary language. The first step in order to do this would be to
investigate the links between philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific concepts
employed in the explanation of moral judgement and their characteristic role in their
theories of origin. For the seminar “Current Issues in philosophy and neurosciences” I’d
like to propose to give a short introduction on one issue about the neuroscientific research
on moral judgement that this first step could shed some light on and which I consider
especially interesting: It has been a striking feature of neuroscientific experiments on
moral judgements that they’re most often „nothing but“ psychological experiments
performed in an fMRI scanner – and their results are most often „only“ used to back up
already quite well confirmed psychological theories on moral judgement. When it comes
to a philosophical or common language interpretation of these neuroscientific findings we
must find that from a philosophical point of view they seem quite boring. They just
confirm stuff that is already “known” from psychological research. The question that
arises in regard of this matter is whether the situation that neuroscientific research on
morality doesn’t seem to give great philosophical insights is owed to „structural“ reasons
(for example due to conceptual constraints) or whether the reasons for that frustrating
situation are just „coincidental“ (due to the fact that just occasionally nobody happened to
do research otherwise).
What does “conceptual constraints” mean here? I’d like to speak of “conceptual
constraints” when we can’t talk in philosophical terms or ordinary language about what
the neurosciences tell us about morality in their own scientific jargon. This could mean
concretely that neuroscientific statements cannot be „translated“ in common ways of
speaking but by „going the long way“ and being first translated into psychological terms –
as a mere confirmation of already existing psychological hypotheses. According to this line
of thought, anything that neuroscience can offer apart from the assertion of psychological
hypothesises would be „lost in translation“.
This would not only be a pity for the interested lay person, but also for the neuroscientist
engaged in the investigation of moral judgement: It would be quite a blow if she would not
be able to explain her findings to laymen apart from what can be proven by her efforts in
psychological research.
As a philosopher I see it as a thrilling task to investigate whether such constraints exist by
examining the links between philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific concepts
that play a role in the philosophical interpretation of neuroscientific results on moral
judgement. The resulting findings could in the best case tell us whether and to what extent
a direct philosophical or ordinary language interpretation of neuroscientific results is
possible – and in how far taking “the long way” would really leave everything that doesn’t
derive from psychological hypothesises in limbo. If such a translation (direct or indirect)
should be possible, it will be an even more fascinating next step to check where there is
room for misunderstandings and misinterpretations of which I daresay that there will be
plenty of. But this will be a different story. My short talk or my poster would give an
account of how such constraints could look like in theory, my reasons for thinking that
they are at least limited, an outlook what I expect to find and possible next steps. I would
set these matters in context of an overall presentation of my dissertation project.
12

Emiliano Zaccarella
On the Nature of Merge: Neuroanatomical Correlates of Local Syntactic
Structures in Natural Language Processing
Probabilistic fiber tracking approaches to language-relevant areas have recently identified
a dorsal stream going from pars opercularis (BA 44) to the posterior temporal cortex via
the superior longitudinal fasciculus, and a more ventral stream going from the frontal
operculum (FOC) to the anterior temporal cortex via the uncinate fasciculum. According
to the ‘two-pathways’ model, it has been suggested that the former stream supports the
processing of non-adjacent elements in hierarchically more complex sentences and
possibly the identification of the constituency structure, while the latter stream supports
the combinations of adjacent elements in a sequence. Even though many studies contrast
this view a direct comparison with the stimulus material so far employed will show that
the model above is still adequate and preferable over alternative suggestions. A corrected
set of stimuli for a following fMRI analysis will be finally discussed.
Fernando Ramirez
Orientation Encoding in the FFA is Selective to Faces: Evidence from
Multivoxal Pattern Analysis
The fusiform face area (FFA) is a region of the human ventral visual pathway that exhibits
a stronger response to faces than objects. The role of this region within the face perception
network is not well understood, and its selectivity has been debated. Furthermore, it is
unclear which properties of visual stimuli are reflected in the patterns of activation of this
region. Here we directly explored the encoding of orientation using a combination of fMRI
and multivoxel pattern analysis. We presented subjects with synthetic images of faces and
cars that were rotated in depth and presented either above or below fixation. We explored
orientation related information available in fine-grained activity patterns in FFA and early
visual cortex. Distributed signals from the FFA allowed above-chance classification of
within-category orientation only for faces. This result generalized to faces presented in
different retinotopic positions. In contrast, classification in early visual cortex resulted in
equal, above-chance classification of face and car orientation, but only when trained and
tested on corresponding retinotopic positions. Classification across position was
substantially decreased for both categories in early visual cortex. We conclude that
category-selective effects of stimulus orientation are reflected in the fine grained patterns
of activation in FFA, and that the structure of these patterns is partially translation
invariant.
13

Georgina Torbet
Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches to Freudian Repression
This presentation will discuss the methods through which the empirical sciences may
investigate psychoanalytic constructs, focusing particularly on repression. While
repression is a well-known clinical phenomenon, it lacks a robust evidence base and is
difficult to reconcile with current knowledge of experimental psychology. We have
attempted to frame repression in terms of mechanisms which are well understood in
cognitive neuroscience, in order to investigate this subject experimentally and to gather
empirical data on it.
We have built upon experiments in directed forgetting, in which people intentionally
forget material which they had previously learned when instructed to do so. We have
replicated this well-known effect, and expanded the paradigm to include cues given in a
non-conscious way. Through innovative use of subliminal stimuli, we have attempted to
demonstrate that unconscious cues can effect memory and induce forgetting. Some
preliminary results will be presented, and implications for the empirical study of
psychoanalytic phenomena will be discussed.
Joachim Lipski
The Role of Neuroscientific Findings in Ascribing Intentional States
The role of intentional terminology in neuroscientific contexts, one of the most crucial
links between philosophy and the neurosciences, is still lacking a proper theoretical
foundation. Available proposals range from a simple identification of intentional
statements with corresponding neurological statements, to a more-or-less strictly causally
moderated relationship, to denying the neurosciences the use of such terminology at all.
Subscribing to any of these views will have a significant bearing on the role that
neuroscientific findings play in the potential ascription of intentional properties, and the
fact that these views are competing has led to many a controversial debate. Personally, I
suggest that many of these proposals, while being mutually exclusive in their elaborated
forms, have put forward valuable points which can be constructively integrated into a
theory of translation between neuroscientific terms, insofar as they pertain to intentional
phenomena, and intentional terms, such as they are being used in analytic philosophy.
14

Judy Ng
Neuroscience and Morality
Where does morality originate? Is it only a social construct or is it hardwired into the
functionings of the human brain? Through observation of many patients with different
brain damage over the decades and their resulting abnormal moral judgments,
neuroscientists have deduced possible links between neuroanatomy and moral judgment.
In addition, fMRI studies have shown an association between brain areas that are
involved in emotional processing and aspects of moral cognition, while other patient
studies have suggested that deficits in moral behavior and cognition are associated with
emotional dysfunction. Many of these studies utilize test stimuli that range from morally
relevant statements and pictures to complex moral scenarios and dilemmas. Taken
together, recent studies suggest that morally relevant stimuli may provoke an emotional
response that may influence moral judgment, but the driving force of the judgment itself
remains to be investigated.
Roland Nigbur
Building Blocks in Human Decision Making and Cognitive Control
Human decision making is based on manifold neuro-cognitive processes that allow goaldirected
predictions of the environmental context but also enable flexible adjustments to
monitor perceptual selection or behavioral adaptation. In so-called conflict paradigms
participants have to react to ambiguous information that sometimes induces competing
activations in the brain. Here, cognitive control is needed to amplify the brain activity to
perform the task at hand correctly.
In my studies I investigated how these control functions can be tracked via
electrophysiological brain activity (EEG). Several approaches have tried to identify the
neural building blocks of executive control functions. The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is
thought to detect conflicts and recruit additional resources from other brain areas
including the lateral prefrontal cortices (LPFC). Together with additional task relevant
areas in the brain such as motor or perceptual systems a network for implementing
control functions is assumed.
I will present data from experiments using different conflict paradigms that will
demonstrate how event-related potentials (ERPs) can help to shed light on the cognitive
architecture of our brain. Furthermore I will show how spectral decomposition of the EEG
signal delivers information about the interaction of different brain areas. In a last step I
will refer to current research investigating the role of emotion and motivation in decision
making and cognitive control functions.
15

Ryszard Auksztulewicz
Recurrent Neural Processing in Somatosensory Awareness
The characteristics of neural processing underlying conscious stimulus detection, despite
extensive research, remain elusive. As a prominent theoretical account of visual
awareness, the recurrent processing hypothesis states that while stimuli generally evoke
feedforward activity propagating through the visual cortex, stimuli which become
consciously detected are further processed in feedforward-feedback loops established
between various stages of visual processing.
Although this hypothesis has not been tested directly in modalities other than vision,
monkey studies have provided indirect evidence for feedback processing in somatosensory
detection. Here we applied dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to EEG data acquired from
humans in a somatosensory detection task to test this theory. In the analysis, we focused
on model-based evidence for feedforward, feedback and recurrent processing between
primary and secondary somatosensory cortices. Our results suggest that increased
recurrent processing within the somatosensory system, dominated by an enhanced cSIcSII
connection, underlies somatosensory awareness.
Saskia Köhler
The Role of the Brain in Impulsivity and Self-Control
Impulsivity is a personality trait that is present in healthy individuals. However, high
impulsivity may also cause problems in social life, such as troubles in partnership, fights,
and traffic violations. This is because impulsive actions are often rapid, unplanned, hasty
and without regard to negative consequences. The opposite of impulsivity can be
described as self-control, given that people showing high impulsivity have problems
controlling their actions, thoughts and emotions. Since an association between impulsivity
and mental illness is apparent, neuroscientific research in this field is important. In my
PhD project, I investigate the role of the brain in impulsivity and self-control with
different approaches: (1) administering different functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) paradigms, which provoke impulsive or self-controlled behavior, (2) examining
fMRI resting state measurements, (3) examining MRI structural measurements, and (4)
determining the influence of virtual lesions with transcranial direct current stimulation
(tDCS). I examine psychiatric patients, which are characterized by high impulsivity and
low self-control competencies (alcohol dependent patients and pathological gamblers),
and healthy subjects. I will present results from at least one of these approaches.
16

Sebastian Philipp
On the Influence of the Brain on the Brain: Be “Aware”!
Altered statistics in external sensory stimuli lead to a change in the neural representation
of the respective sensory entity. This is the well investigated phenomenon that the
external world shapes representations in the brain. However, besides some recent studies
it is not yet investigated how internal, mental conditions – such as attention, imagery or
meditation – effect neural sensory representations – which is the question of whether and
how the brain itself shapes representations in the brain. The effects of altered external
stimulation of the body on somatosensory representations are well investigated by
psychophysically measuring the tactile acuity of human subjects. Recent studies report
effects of long-term Tai Chi practice on tactile acuity [2]. Tai Chi is a sensory attentional
training where practitioners focus attention on the body's extremities. Study results
showed that Tai Chi practitioners' tactile acuity in the finger tips is superior to that of the
matched controls. However, it is questionable if these effects are only due to the subjects'
having focused their attention on their extremities during the long-term practice over
several years or if it is also due to the bodily aspects of the long-term Tai Chi practice. In
our study, we investigate the effect of a short meditative training – a purely mental
training – on tactile acuity in the finger tips. Tactile acuity of subjects with ample
experience in Zazen is measured psychophysically before the training period. During the
training period of two hours, subjects are asked to be completely aware of the arising
sensory percepts in their fingertips while preventing external stimulation by not moving
their hands. After training, subjects' tactile acuity is measured again. We compare tactile
acuity before and after the meditative intervention. In my presentation I will give an
introduction to the topics of meditation and alterations of sensory representations by
external stimulation. Furthermore, I will show preliminary results from our current study
on the effects of meditation on tactile acuity and I will mention possible philosophical
aspects of this study in order to yield an open discussion with the audience.
17

Smadar Ovadia-Caro
Reduction of Inter-hemispheric Connectivity in Disorders of Consciousness
Disorders of consciousness (DOC) pose diagnostic challenges because patients can be
behaviorally unresponsive. A promising new approach towards DOC diagnosis may be
offered by the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired in
the absence of any task demands (“resting-state”). Previous work has shown reduced
functional connectivity within the "default network", a subset of regions known to be
deactivated during engaging tasks, which correlated with the degree of consciousness
impairment. However, it remains unclear whether the breakdown of connectivity is
restricted to the "default network", and to what degree changes in functional connectivity
can be observed at the single-subject level. Here, we analyzed resting-state interhemispheric
connectivity in three homotopic regions of interest, which could reliably be
identified based on distinct anatomical landmarks, and were part of an "externally
oriented network". Resting-state fMRI data were acquired for a group of 11 healthy
subjects and 8 DOC patients. At the group level, our results indicate decreased interhemispheric
functional connectivity in patients with impaired awareness as compared to
subjects with intact awareness. The single-case statistic by Crawford & Howell (1998)
indicated a significant deviation from the healthy sample in 5/8 patients. Importantly, of
the three patients whose connectivity indices were comparable to the healthy sample, one
was diagnosed as locked-in. Our results highlight the clinical potential of resting-state
fMRI data, and suggest further investigation of inter-hemispheric connectivity as a
complementary diagnostic measure for DOC patients.
Sophie Herbst
The Mystery of the Internal Clock, or What do we Know about Time
Perception?
Time perception is becoming a popular research field again, based on its long-standing
history that dates back to antique philosophers. In my talk I’ll give a short insight on the
topic from a psychological viewpoint, illustrated by recent discussions in the scientific
community and discuss how state-of-the-art neuroscience methods can help to uncover
the mysteries of which there are still plenty in this field.
Subsequently I will focus on my thesis’ question: how perceptual processes can influence
our internal time keeping mechanisms. Different views exist about whether subjective
duration is based on early perceptual processes or relates to higher-level stimulus
processing requiring attention. In order to distinguish between the influences of early and
late processes perceptual processing on perceived duration, we applied a well-established
paradigm from attention research: the Attentional Blink. Our preliminary findings argue
for a specific influence of higher-level cognitive processes on perceived duration, or – in
other words – suggest that simple changes in visual input do not fully explain the
emergence of subjective duration.
18

Vera Ludwig
Hypnosis and Neuroscience
Hypnosis can influence perception, behaviour, and cognition in healthy people. For
example, susceptible individuals may temporarily experience their own movements as
produced by an external source, they may have hallucinations, or they may report a
complete absence of pain. Such effects make hypnosis a potentially powerful tool for
cognitive neuroscience; and indeed, this method is increasingly being used in
neuroimaging studies. I will explain what hypnosis can do for mind-and-brain research by
showing how it has helped to elucidate the neural basis of certain subjective phenomena
(e.g., pain, feeling of agency). However, I will also consider the limitations and challenges
of research using hypnosis – in particular, the possibility that hypnotized participants are
merely role-playing. After the presentation, we will discuss to what extent and in which
cases hypnosis can be a useful research tool.
19

Berlin Faculty
List of participants
Ellen Fridland, PhD ellenfridland@gmail.com
Prof. Michael Pauen m@pauen.com
Prof. Arno Villringer villringer@cbs.mpg.de
Berlin Participants
Ryszard Auksztulewicz rikismo@gmail.com
Sophie Herbst ksherbst@gmail.com
Bianca van Kemenade biancavankemenade@gmail.com
Saskia Koehler saskia.koehler@psychologie.hu-berlin.de
Vera Ludwig vera.Ludwig@gmx.net
Roland Nigbur rolandnigbur@googlemail.com
Smadar Ovadia smadar.ovadia@gmail.com
Milena Rabovsky milena.rabovsky@hu-berlin.de
Fernando Ramirez toporam@yahoo.com
Georgina Torbet gtorbe01@students.bbk.ac.uk
Corinde Wiers corinde@gmail.com
Emiliano Zaccarella zaccarella@cbs.mpg.de
Munich Faculty
Prof. Benedikt Grothe grothe@lmu.de
PD Dr. Stephan Sellmaier stephan.sellmaier@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Prof. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl vossenkuhl@lmu.de
Munich Participants
Armin Bahl arbahl@gmail.com
Aleksandra Kupferberg aleksandra.kupferberg@gmx.de
David Kaufmann david_kaufmann@gmx.net
Joachim Lipski abt-nihil@gmx.de
Arun Singh arun.singh@med.uni-muenchen.de
Judy Ng judyng@neuro.mpg.de
Barbara Trattner barbaratrattner@hotmail.com
Sebastian Philipp seb.t.p@gmx.de
Christian Kellner kellner@biologie.uni-muenchen.de
Alexandra Soutschek alex.soutschek@web.de
Annette Winkelmann, Manager Berlin School of Mind and Barin
Dr. Alexandra Stein, Coordinator Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences
20

Accomodation and transportation
Our accommodation: Don Orione Artigianelli
Website: www.donorione-venezia.it
Zattere Dorsoduro 909/A - 30123 Venezia –
tel +39 0415224077 - fax +39 0415286214
Transportation to San Servolo
From the guesthouse, you need to go to the station "Zaterre" and take boat number 51 or
2, leaving at 8:21 / 8:20 to San Zaccaria and there change to line 20 to San Servolo.
(http://www.actv.it/; http://www.univiu.org/viu-quick/how-to-get-viu)
21