- Phineas Gage
Phineas P. Gage (1823 - May 21, 1860) was a railroad construction foreman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull, damaging the frontal lobes of his brain. This injury is supposed to have negatively affected his emotional, social and personal traits-leaving him in a temperamental and unsociable state, so much so that his friends said he was "no longer Gage". At the time of its report to the scientific community, …
- Sam Harris
Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American writer. He is the author of "The End of Faith" (2004), which was inspired by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2006), a rejoinder to the criticism the first book attracted. His articles have appeared in "Newsweek", "The Los Angeles Times", "The Times" of London, and "The Boston Globe".
- Francis Harry Compton Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on June 8th, 1916, at Northampton, England, being the elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins . He has one brother, A. F. Crick , who is a doctor in New Zealand. Crick was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Mill Hill School, London.
- Christof Koch
Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist educated in North Africa and Europe. He received a PhD in nonlinear information processing from the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany in 1982. He currently holds the position of Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology, California Institute of Technology, where he has been since 1986.
- Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins (born June 1, 1957 in Huntington, New York) is the founder of Palm Computing (where he invented the Palm Pilot) and Handspring (where he invented the Treo). He has since turned to work on neuroscience full-time and has founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute and published "On Intelligence" describing his memory-prediction framework theory of the brain.
- Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology. His mother was from Syria and her father was son of the Spanish emigrant, Alejandro Varela and Greek emigrant Anastassia Karri.
- Matt Ridley
Matthew (Matt) Ridley (born February 7, 1958 at Newcastle upon Tyne) is an English science writer. He received a doctorate in zoology from the University of Oxford before commencing a career in science journalism. Ridley worked as a science correspondent for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph.
- Jean-Pierre Changeux
Jean-Pierre Changeux is a French neuroscientist, who researched many different areas of biology in his life, from the structure and function of proteins, to the early development of the nervous system. He reached fame in the scientific world for his work on allosteric proteins. However, it was with the publication of his book "Neuronal Man: The Biology of The Mind" in 1985 that Changeux reached celebrity status in the wider public.
- Chris Frith
Chris Frith (born March 16, 1942, United Kingdom -) is a psychologist working at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. His primary interest is in the applications of functional brain imaging to the study of higher cognitive functions in humans. With over 270 publications, Frith is one of the ISI Highly Cited authors in Neuroscience. His H-index is 104. He is author of a number of important neuroscience books, …
- Read Montague
Read Montague is an American neuroscientist and popular science author. He holds a professorship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he also serves as Director of the College's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.
- Jeffrey M. Schwartz
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. is a well known American scientist in the field of Neuroplasticity, and its application to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). After receiving a bachelors with honors in Philosophy, he changed career directions to the medical sciences. Currently associate research professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, he is also a fellow with the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.
- Daniel Levitin
"This Is Your Brain on Music" official website.
- Owen Flanagan
Owen Flanagan, Ph.D. (born 1949) is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, contemporary ethical theory, moral psychology, as well as Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self. Flanagan earned his Ph.D from Boston University. Flanagan has written extensively on consciousness.
- Brian Knutson
Brian Knutson is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford University and director of the Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience. His research focuses on the neural basis of emotion. His research, especially on the neurological factors behind consumer purchasing decisions, has been covered in multiple news sources.
- Bruce McEwen
BRUCE MCEWEN , director of the Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University, reports on the growing problem of stress and reveals the damage it can inflict on both biological health and cognitive abilities, such as memory.
- William H. Calvin
William H. Calvin, Ph.D., (born 30 April 1939) is a Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a well-known popularizer of neuroscience and evolutionary biology, including the hybrid of these two fields, neural Darwinism. He relates abrupt climate change to human evolution and speculates about the future. In his book "How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now", …
- Solomon H. Snyder
Dr. Solomon H. Snyder (born December 26, 1938) is an American neuroscientist. Snyder graduated from Georgetown University in 1958 and Georgetown Medical School in 1962. At a very early age he published his research on ornithine decarboxylase and RNA synthesis which opened up countless vistas in the neurosciences. After a two-year fellowship at the NIH, Snyder moved to Johns Hopkins Medical School to complete his residency in psychiatry.
- Stephen Kosslyn
Stephen Michael Kosslyn (born in 1948) is an American psychologist. He is currently a professor of psychology and Chair of the department of psychology at Harvard University and a researcher in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. He received his B.A. in 1970 from UCLA and his Ph.D.from Stanford University in 1974, both in psychology. His former teaching career includes Johns Hopkins and Brandeis Universities.
- David Marr
David Marr (January 19, 1945 - November 17, 1980) was a British neuroscientist. Born in Essex, and educated at Rugby School, he completed his B.A. in mathematics at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, staying on to do a Ph.D. in neuroscience under Professor G.F. Brindley. His doctoral dissertation was submitted in 1969 and described his model of the function of the cerebellum based mainly on anatomical and physiological data garnered from a book by J.C. Eccles.
- David Marr
David Marr (January 19, 1945 - November 17, 1980) was a British psychologist. Born in Essex, and educated at Rugby School, he completed his B.A. in mathematics at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, staying on to do a Ph.D. in neuroscience under Professor G.F. Brindley. His doctoral dissertation was submitted in 1969 and described his model of the function of the cerebellum based mainly on anatomical and physiological data garnered from a book by J.C. Eccles.
- Santiago Ramón Y Cajal
Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish histologist, physician, and Nobel laureate. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern neuroscience.
- Marc Breedlove
Dr. Marc Breedlove , professor of psychology* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain. * The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a "professor of psychology at UCLA." Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 "I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA." Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State .
- Terry Sejnowski
Terrence Joseph Sejnowski is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is the Francis Crick Professor at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. He is also Professor of Biological Sciences and Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Neurosciences, Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, …
- Daniel Schacter
Daniel Schacter is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Schacter investigates issues related to human memory. Schacter's books include: "Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past" (1996); "Forgotten ideas, neglected pioners: Richard Semon and the story of memory." (2001); "The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers" (2001). In "The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers", …
- Susan Hockfield
A graduate of the University of Rochester, Dr. Hockfield received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at San Francisco, she joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1980.
- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur S. "Rama" Ramachandran (born 1951) is a neurologist best known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and psychophysics. He received a degree in medicine from Stanley Medical College in Madras, India, and later, a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and scientific advisor to the Beckley Foundation.
- Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana (born September 14, 1928 in Santiago) is a Chilean biologist whose work crosses over into philosophy and cognitive science. Maturana and his student Francisco Varela were the first to define and employ the concept of autopoiesis. Maturana is also a founder of radical constructivism, a relativistic epistemology built on empirical findings of neurobiology. In his own words:<blockquote>Living systems are cognitive systems, …
- Joseph E. Ledoux
Joseph E. LeDoux (b. 1949), a neuroscientist, is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science, and Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at New York University. He is also the director of the Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety, multi-university Center in NYC devoted to using animal research to understand pathological fear and anxiety in humans. He received his Ph.D. in 1977 at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
- Adele Diamond
Adele Diamond is one of the founders of the field of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She holds the Canada Research Chair Tier 1 Professorship in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver. She is one of the world's leading researchers on the development of the cognitive functions (called “executive functions,” “self-regulation,” or “cognitive control”) that depend on prefrontal cortex.
- Samuel Weiss
Samuel Weiss is a Canadian neurobiologist. Weiss was an undergraduate at McGill University, where he received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry. He then went on to take his Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the University of Calgary. From 1983 to 1988 he held two postdoctoral fellowships funded by the AHFMR and the Medical Research Council of Canada (now the Canadian Institutes of Health Research), the first at the Centre de Pharmacologie-Endocologie, Montpellier, France, …
- Terrence Deacon
Terrence Deacon is Associate Professor at Boston University and a Harvard University Ph.D. He teaches courses in Biological Anthropology and in the Neurosciences at Boston University. He taught at Harvard University from 1984 to 1992, at Boston University from 1992 to present, and was a research associate at Harvard Medical School from 1992 to 1999. Professor Deacon's research focuses on the evolution of the brain.
- Irving Biederman
Irving Biederman, Ph.D. Vision scientist specializing in the study of brain processes underlying humans' ability to quickly recognize and interpret what they see. While best known for his Recognition by Components Theory that focuses on object recognition, his more recent work has tended to examine the recognition of human faces. Biederman argues that face recognition is separate and distinct from the recognition of objects.
- Merlin Donald
Merlin Wilfred Donald (born November 17, 1939) is a Canadian psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, and a researcher, educator, and author in the corresponding fields.
- Gordon Shepherd
Gordon Shepherd is a Yale University professor of neuroscience and neurobiology. He has made important contributions on the synaptic organization of the brain. His current research focuses on olfaction, at the level of dendrites, dendritic spines, and synapses, mostly in the olfactory bulb.
- Nancy Rothwell
Nancy Rothwell obtained a first class degree in Physiology in 1976, a PhD in 1978 and a DSc in 1987 from the University of London. Her early research identified mechanisms of energy balance regulation, obesity and cachexia. In 1984 she was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship and relocated to Manchester in 1987. Nancy was awarded a Chair in physiology in 1994, then a prestigious Medical Research Council Research Chair in 1998.
- António Damásio
António Damasio, <small>GOSE</small>;, pron., (b. 1944, Lisbon, Portugal) is a behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist. He is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W. Van Allen Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, Iowa, United States.
- Elliot Valenstein
Elliot S. Valenstein, PhD, is a professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. His theories challenge the conventional assumption that mental illness is biochemical, rejecting the 'chemical imbalance' theories used by drug companies in marketing their products, contending people should be suspicious of such claims while suggesting the targets of the marketing are usually medicating themselves unnecessarily.
- James A. Anderson
James (Jim) A. Anderson is a Professor of Cognitive Science and Brain Science at Brown University. His multi-disciplinary background includes expertise in psychology, biology, physics, neuroscience and computer science. Anderson received his PhD from MIT. Anderson's research on applications of neural networks have been instrumental to the field of cognitive science as well as numerous business applications.
- Lera Boroditsky
Lera Boroditsky is an Assistant Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. Dr. Boroditsky grew up in Minsk in the former Soviet Union. After earning (well, receiving anyway) a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 2001, Boroditsky served on the faculty at MIT in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences. In 2004 she returned to California and took a faculty position at Stanford.
- Barry Everitt
Professor Barry Everitt is Master of Downing College, Cambridge and a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He graduated in Zoology and Psychology at Hull University, received a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, and post-doctoral training at Birmingham and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, under the eminent neuroanatomist Professor T. Hokfelt. He was appointed to the Department of Anatomy at the University of Cambridge in 1974, …