Georg Northoff

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Georg Northoff (* 1963 in Hamburg ) is a German physician and philosopher . He is considered an important representative of neurophilosophy .

Life

Northoff studied in Hamburg, Essen , Bochum and New York . From 1996 he worked as a senior physician at the Psychiatric University Clinic Magdeburg . He completed his habilitation in medicine in 1998 and philosophy in 1999 and taught at the Universities of Magdeburg and Harvard , among others . At the University of Ottawa he has held the specially created chair for mind, brain and neuroethics since 2009 . His research focuses on functional imaging for the investigation of emotions , neurobiology , psychiatric diseases, analytical philosophy of the mind, neurophilosophy , neuropsychoanalysis and neuroethics.

Research approach

Northoff assumes a “relational” or “interactive” approach: accordingly, the brain and mind are not to be viewed in isolation, but are always in an internal relationship (relation) to the body and the environment. He interprets the self and psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia in terms of how the relationship between mind, body and environment is organized or changed. The basis of all mental activity of man - and thus the condition of the possibility of conscious experience - is not the personality or subjective identity, but a "self-related processing". Northoff understands this as the fundamental code, the way in which the brain relates all stimuli to itself, its own body and its own mind. Initially, this self-related processing works purely neuronally, i.e. as an automatic activity of the brain. Gradually higher and higher psychological functions then build on this: a physical, emotional and finally also mental (cognitive) self-experience. The latter first enables conscious perception and then also conscious reflection of one's own self.

He tries conceptually and in his neuroscientific experiments to include the “ first-person perspective ”, the subjective experience of the test subjects. For him, mental phenomena, including the self, are also always culturally shaped.

Fonts (selection)

  • The brain without discipline - what now, Mr. Kant? Irisiana, Munich 2012. ISBN 978-3-424-15123-7
  • The search for the self: a neurophilosophical crime story . Irisiana, Munich 2009. ISBN 978-3-424-15034-6
  • Personal identity and operative interventions in the brain: neurophilosophical, empirical and ethical investigations . Mentis, Paderborn 2001. ISBN 3-89785-097-4
  • The brain: a neurophilosophical investigation . Mentis, Paderborn 2000. ISBN 3-89785-096-6
  • Catatonia: Introduction to the phenomenology, clinic and pathophysiology of a psychomotor syndrome . Enke, Stuttgart 1997. ISBN 3-432-29811-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Self and brain: what is self-related processing?  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 81 kB) In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, May 2011, Vol. 15, No. 5@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.imhr.ca  
  2. ↑ The trans-species core Self  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 410 kB) In: Consciousness and Cognition, March 2009, pp. 193–215 (with Jaak Panksepp)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sunship2.net  
  3. ↑ First-Person Neuroscience: A new methodological approach for linking mental and neuronal states (PDF; 325 kB) In: Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, March 2006 (with Alexander Heinzel)
  4. ↑ Shihui Han, Georg Northoff: Understanding the self: a cultural neuroscience approach . In: Progress in brain research . tape 178 , 2009, ISSN  1875-7855 , doi : 10.1016 / S0079-6123 (09) 17814-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Northoff, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurophilosophist
DATE OF BIRTH 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg