Public lecture by Prof. Luiz Pessoa: “The entangled brain”

On June 12 at 16:00 Professor Luiz Passoa from the University of Maryland will give a public lecture titled “The entangled brain”. Listeners are welcome to Näituse 2 room 102 or Zoom.

Luiz Pessoa (University of Maryland) is a leading figure in both psychology and neuroscience. His research has meticulously dismantled the traditional separation of cognitive and emotional processes in the brain, laying the groundwork for integrated human neuroscience.

In this talk, Professor Pessoa will discuss how cognition, motivation, and emotion can only be understood as entangled phenomena.

The traditional view of brain organization posits that cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes operate through fairly separate, dedicated neural systems. This presentation challenges this modular perspective, arguing instead for an “entangled brain” characterized by massive combinatorial connectivity, distributed functional interactions, and circuits/networks as fundamental units of function. The presentation critiques the standard decomposition approach that emphasizes independence between mental faculties, proposing instead that distributed circuits dynamically assemble across the neuroaxis in context-dependent ways. I also illustrate how subcortical structures like the superior colliculus and periaqueductal gray, brain regions traditionally associated with "lower" functions, participate in complex cognitive-emotional processes. The proposed integrative framework has implications for understanding complex behaviors, mental disorders, and the fundamental nature of brain function, suggesting that interaction and integration – rather than separation – are necessary for elucidating how large-scale brain systems support behavior.

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Meeting ID: 963 7969 2986
Passcode: 098612