Overview

Research over the past two decades has identified specific features of neural oscillations and synchrony that appear to participate in perceptual processes and consciousness. These may be among the mechanisms that are affected by meditation. This set of reflections will consider the application of basic research on neural oscillations and synchrony to the understand of changes that may be produced by meditation and related forms of mental practice.

Dialogue 13
16 sessions
November 10, 2005
Dar Constitution Hall, Washington, DC
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Speakers

Bennett Shapiro is a consultant in biotechnology. He was previously Executive Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research, where he directed Merck's research relationships with the academic and industrial biomedical research community. He joined Merck Research Laboratories in September of 1990 as Executive Vice President, Basic Research, Merck Research Laboratories. In this position he was responsible for all the basic and preclinical research activities at Merck worldwide. Earlier, he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He is the author of over 120 papers on the molecular regulation of cellular behavior and the biochemical events that integrate the cascade of cellular activations at fertilization.

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Wolf Singer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and Founding Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Brain Research. He studied medicine at the Universities of Munich and Paris, received his M.D. from the Ludwig Maximilian University and his Ph.D. from the Technical University in Munich. Until the mid-eighties his research interests were focused on the experience-dependent development of the cerebral cortex and on mechanisms of use-dependent synaptic plasticity. Subsequently, his research concentrated on the binding problem that arises from the distributed organization of the cerebral cortex.

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