Michael Gazzaniga

Michael Gazzaniga ( born December 12, 1939) is an American neuroscientist. He was until 2006 a professor at Dartmouth College, where he was director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. In 2006 he left Dartmouth to accept a professorship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He now heads the SAGE Center for Neurosciences.

1961 closed Gazzaniga his studies at Dartmouth College. A year later he acquired at the California Institute of Technology, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph. D. ) in psychobiology. There he worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry, where his main responsibility was to research on the processes in the two halves of the human brain ( " split-brain research" ) to initiate. As a result, he achieved important progress in understanding the functional lateralization of the brain and in the manner and way in which the two hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other.

Michael Gazzaniga's numerous publications include many understandable even for beginners books with one, including the cognitive brain. Discoveries in the networks of the mind as well as other titles that have not yet been translated into German. It is these books that, along with Gazzaniga's appearances on American television ("The Brain and The Mind " ), information about the brain function to a broad public have made ​​available. He recently published The Cognitive Neurosciences III, a work containing the work of nearly 200 scientists in 94 chapters and is regarded as fundamental work in this field of science.

Gazzaniga is also known for his teaching and mentoring. So he not only started the Centers for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, whose director he was from 1992 to 1996, and at Dartmouth College. He also accompanied the work of many young scientists and founded the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, he operated as its editor itself.

From 1973 to 1978 he was professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1977-1988 Director of the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cornell University.

From 1982 he has been president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute and in 1993 he became the founder of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

He is much sought-after speaker and has spoken before the prestigious Royal Institution of Great Britain, where he presented the famous Friday night lectures, which were opened by Michael Faraday. Michael Gazzaniga is also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. Gazzaniga has made ​​significant contributions to the development of neuroethics.

Writings

  • The social brain: Discovering the networks of the minimum Basic Books, New York, 1985, ISBN 0-465-07850-8. German translation: The trial brain: discoveries in the networks of the mind. Junfermann, Paderborn, 1989, ISBN 3-87387-290-0
  • German Translation: When the man is a man? Answers to ethical questions in neuroscience. Patmos, Dusseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-36008-2.
  • German translation: The I - Illusion: How consciousness and free will arise. Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-43011-2.
Biological psychology Roger Wolcott Sperry Integrated Authority File
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