Michael Gazzaniga

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

Life

In 1961 Gazzaniga graduated from Dartmouth College. A year later he earned a PhD in Psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology . There he worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry , where his main responsibility was to initiate studies on the processes in the two halves of the human brain (" split-brain research"). As a result, he made important advances in understanding the functional lateralization of the brain and the way the two halves of the brain communicate with each other.

From 1973 to 1978 he was Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook , and from 1977 to 1988 Director of the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cornell University .

From 1982 he is President of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute and he became the founder of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in 1993 . In 1997 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 2011 to the National Academy of Sciences .

activity

Michael Gazzaniga's numerous publications include many books understandable even for laypeople, including The Cognitive Brain. Discoveries in the networks of the mind and other titles that have not yet been translated into German. It is precisely these books that, along with Gazzaniga's appearances on American television ( The Brain and The Mind ), have made information about brain function accessible to a wide audience. He is the editor of The Cognitive Neurosciences , a work that includes the work of nearly 200 scholars and is considered a fundamental work in the field.

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

He is a popular speaker and has spoken to the prestigious Royal Institution of Great Britain , where he presented the famous Friday evening lectures opened by Michael Faraday . Michael Gazzaniga is also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. Gazzaniga made significant contributions to the development of neuroethics .

Fonts

• The social brain: Discovering the networks of the mind. Basic Books, New York 1985, ISBN 0-465-07850-8 .
  • German translation: The knowing brain: discoveries in the networks of the mind. Junfermann, Paderborn 1989, ISBN 3-87387-290-0
• (with Richard B. Ivry, George R. Mangun) Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. WW Norton, New York 1998, ISBN 0-393-97219-4 .
• The ethical brain. Dana Press, New York 2005, ISBN 1-932594-01-9 .
  • German translation: When is man a man? Neuroscience Answers to Ethical Questions. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-36008-2 .
• Who's in charge? Free will and the science of the brain. HarperCollins, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-190610-7 .
  • German translation: The I Illusion: How Consciousness and Free Will arise. Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-43011-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Gazzaniga in the catalog of the German National Library