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While we share a common environment, our interaction with reality is unique. Advances in neuroimaging, neural network manipulation and modelling will allow us to explore the chaotic way that our brain experiences and interacts with reality. Join the experts who are unravelling these mysteries to explain the chaotic maze of our brain and how animals represent and interact with the world, before delving into the mystery of 'psychosis'.
The story of a noisy brain
The brain is a noisy and chaotic network, shuttling information from place to place. This talk will look at some of the principles that underlie brain networks, making use of mathematical models and network theory in health and disease. This will be a trip through an emerging story that is fundamental to our understanding of how our brains are beautifully, if a little chaotically, put together.
The space of actions
When it is said that we ‘localize’ an object, what does it mean? It means that we create a representation in our minds of the movements that are necessary to reach that object. For the French mathematician Henry Poincaré, motion is at the heart of the perceptual construction of space. Starting from his intuition, we will discuss how animals create a representation of space for interacting with the world.
Castles in the Air: Making and Inhabiting a Different Reality
One of the most mysterious experiences that we come across in psychiatry is "psychosis", which refers to a loss of contact with reality. It has many causes and manifestations and it poses major challenges to our understanding. I propose the view that it can actually be understood in terms of the normal functioning of the mind, which seeks to construct a working model of reality even though it has very little direct contact with that reality.
