Thank you for being with us. We hope you enjoyed the 14th “Behind and Beyond the Brain” Symposium.
We are counting on you for the next edition in 2026!
Creativity
Creativity - our ability to imagine and bring into existence something new - is probably the most remarkable feature of human cognition. It is at the core of scientific innovation and drives art in all its forms; it is what explains progress, revolutions, crises and their resolution. But how does it work? What do we know about what creativity is, who has it, and what we can do to enhance it? With its 14th “Behind and Beyond the Brain” Symposium, the BIAL Foundation will seek to address such questions by gathering prominent neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and artists and engage them in a profoundly interdisciplinary dialogue over the course of a rich program extending over three days.
Opening
The Symposium will open on April 3rd with an evening lecture by Todd Lubart (Paris, FR), who will overview creativity inside and outside the boundaries of the Mind as a phenomenon that goes beyond an individual with a brain.
First session
The first session (“The foundations of creativity”), will take place on the morning of April 4th. Moderated by Caroline Watt (Edinburgh, UK), it will be dedicated to the foundations of creativity. Nicola Clayton & Mark Baldwin (Cambridge, UK) will first explore how movement, for instance through dance, enables creativity. Next, Christine Simmonds-Moore (West Georgia, US) and Amory Danek (Heidelberg, DE) will respectively overview the cognitive mechanisms and neural basis of creativity. The session will close with a keynote lecture by Anna Abraham (Georgia, US), who will address fundamental aspects of creativity by debunking some myths we entertain about it.
Second session
The second session (“The expressions of creativity”), taking place on the morning of April 5th, will explore different expressions of creativity and different ways in which creativity can be stimulated. It will be moderated by Rainer Goebel (Maastricht, NL). Michael Hanchett Hanson (New York, US) will focus on how the systems view of creative work fits with the objectives of effective education. Lucia Melloni (Frankfurt, DE) will report on creative approaches to science. Marilyn Schlitz (Palo Alto, US) will explore the links between psi phenomena and the creative mind. Finally, in the closing keynote lecture, Morten Kringelbach (Oxford, UK) will overview how “the improvising brain” as it expresses itself through music leads to meaning making and thriving.
Third session
The third session (“The edges of creativity”), which will take place on the morning of April 6th, takes creativity to the edges and beyond. Sergio Neuenschwander (Rio Grande do Norte, BR) will focus on cinema as a disruptive art form that makes it possible to invent reality. Frederick Barrett (Baltimore, US) will explore how psychedelic drugs can enhance creativity in musical improvisation. And Marcus du Sautoy (Oxford, UK) asks a crucial question: Can an artificial intelligence be creative? Edward Kelly (Virginia, US) will close the session with a keynote lecture aimed at understanding creative experiences in extreme contexts such as near-death or situations involving paranormal phenomena. The session will be moderated by Stefan Schmidt (Freiburg, DE).
Blitz oral session
In addition to organizing its biannual symposium, the BIAL Foundation also supports fundamental research relevant to the study of the mind. On the afternoon of April 4th, the recipients of BIAL Foundation grants will have an opportunity to present their work in a blitz oral session during which they will give a 2m overview of their research poster, exhibited throughout the symposium. This exciting session will be moderated by Mário Simões (Lisbon, PT).
Workshops
The symposium will further be greatly enhanced by an outstanding set of four participatory workshops taking place in parallel on the afternoon of April 5th. In Workshop 1, Penousal Machado and Tiago Martins (Coimbra, PT) will invite participants to explore artificial intelligence in subtending creativity in art and science. Workshop 2, animated by Nicola Clayton and Mark Baldwin, is focused on creative movement (“Come prepared to move your body!”). Led by Christine Simmonds-Moore and Etzel Cardeña (Lund, SE), Workshop 3 will explore the wonders of the merging of the senses through synesthetic creativity between sound and drawing. Finally, in Workshop 4, organized by the renowned Portuguese musician and author Pedro Abrunhosa (Porto, PT), we will allow ourselves to be immersed in sounds, harmony, rhythm, or silence, so that everyone can say what they perceive in the invisible.
Final roundtable
The symposium will close on the afternoon of April 6th with a final roundtable moderated by Axel Cleeremans (Brussels, BE) and featuring Pedro Abrunhosa, Mark Baldwin & Nicola Clayton, Marilyn Schlitz, and Sergio Neuenschwander. This will be an opportunity to further reflect upon and share the core findings from the symposium, and to offer a final opportunity for the audience to interact with representative speakers.
With its 14th Symposium, the BIAL Foundation hopes to engage speakers and the audience around a deep, interdisciplinary reflection about what is perhaps the defining characteristic of the human mind: Its astounding ability to creatively envision novel solutions to problems, to imagine possible worlds and futures, to share beauty, and to transcend itself.
14th Symposium: Program
The Organizing Committee, Participants & Program
- Organizing Committee & Participants
- April 3
- April 4
- April 5
- April 6
- General Information
Organizing Committee
Bruxelas
Lund
Coimbra
Seatle, Wa
Maastricht
Friburgo
Edimburgo
Participants
(Athens, Ga)
(Porto)
(Cambridge)
(Baltimore, Md)
(Lund)
(Coimbra)
(Cambridge)
(Brussels)
(Seattle, Wa)
(Heidelberg)
(Oxford)
(Maastricht)
(New York)
(Virginia, Va)
(Oxford)
(Paris)
(Coimbra)
(Coimbra)
(Frankfurt)
(Rio Grande Do Norte)
(Palo Alto, Ca)
(Freiburg)
(Carrollton, Ga)
(Lisbon)
(Minho)
(Edinburgh)
Chairman | Axel Cleeremans
Research Director with the F.R.S-FNRS (Belgium); Director of the Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. Scientific Interests: Consciousness; unconscious cognition; computational modelling of cognitive processes; agency; affective neuroscience.
Todd Lubart
Professor of Psychology, University Paris Cité, France. Serves on the editorial board of several journals concerning creativity and innovation, received the Berlyne award (American Psychological Association), the NAGC Torrance Award, and was a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. President of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation. Scientific interests: measures of creative potential; environmental support for creativity using virtual reality; development of creativity through game play and the use of generative AI for creativity.
Research on creativity over the past century has evolved to focus increasingly on the brain as the epicenter of original thinking. However, a broader perspective developed in this presentation suggests that creativity is not only happening inside a person's head. Creativity is a contextualized phenomenon that goes beyond an individual with a brain. Indeed, creativity may not require a brain at all. In this regard, insights offered by recent advances in artificial intelligence will be discussed to complete the brief introduction to creativity.
Caroline Watt
Holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, and founder member of the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Scientific interests: testing the psi hypothesis using the ganzfeld method; replication and methodological issues in parapsychology.
Nicola Clayton
Professor of Comparative Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK. Fellow of Clare College and Fellow of the Royal Society, Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Integration of Science, Technology and Culture. She has worked with Mark Baldwin for almost fifteen years. Scientific and artistic interests: thinking with and without words; choreography inspired by comparative cognition.
Mark Baldwin
Multi-award-winning choreographer, artistic director and visual artist. Academic Visitor, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK, where he works with Nicola Clayton. Scientific and artistic interests: thinking with and without words; choreography inspired by his background as a performer both as a dancer/choreographer and as Artistic Director of Britains National Dance Company Rambert 2002-18. Made an Officer of the British Empire in 2015 for his services to dance.
Mental time travel refers to the subjective experience of recalling the past and imagining the future. It is about projecting the self in time, reflecting on where we have been and where we are going in space and time. Memories are not fixed repositories of the past but move in flexible ways because they evolved with the future in mind. We will explore these concepts scientifically and artistically through our joint interest in choreography, the ways in which we explore the movement and musicality of wordless thoughts in humans and in other animals with whom we share the planet and its implications for creativity.
Christine Simmonds-Moore
Professor of Psychology, Psychology program, Department of Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology, University of West Georgia, USA. Director of the Exceptional Experiences Research Lab [EERL]. Scientific interests: exceptional experiences (ExE); paranormal beliefs and disbeliefs; individual difference correlates of ExE (including positive schizotypy, transliminality, synesthesia, ASMR, and interoception); mental health correlates of ExE; altered states of consciousness.
There is a collection of neural, perceptual, and cognitive attributes that contribute to both creativity and tendencies toward a range of exceptional experiences (ExE), including ostensible psi phenomena. These attributes reflect a plastic, connected (disinhibited) nervous system (mind and body) and cognitive style which translates to being psychologically and physically sensitive to a range of internal and external stimuli and sources of information. In addition, this type of system often tends toward syncretic tendencies that enable tangible representations of ideas, stimuli, and information that may not usually be consciously available. Intriguingly, there seems to be an interplay between individual differences, states of consciousness, and other factors in terms of creativity and exceptional experiences. Variables of interest include synesthesia, transliminality, Hartmann’s boundary thinness, positive schizotypy, interoception, and ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). In this paper and presentation, I will explore how systems in which one can dip in and out of connected states may result in more genuinely creative outputs and the availability of ostensible psi phenomena. These systems may relate to systems that are rich in fractal signatures and exhibit metacognitive traits and cognitive organization.
Amory Danek
Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Germany. Founder of Insight without Borders (discussion forum for insight researchers across the world). Scientific interests: human problem solving; creativity; meta-reasoning; false insights; memory and magic tricks.
Insightful ideas are a powerful expression of creativity. Hundred years after Wolfgang Köhler observed “insightful” behaviour of chimpanzees on the island of Tenerife, creative problem solving has become an exciting area of research, with links to metacognition, memory and emotion. New methodological approaches have revived the study of creativity and insight problem solving. Research addressing the peculiar phenomenology of insight (“Aha! experiences”) has seen the most interest recently, but the crucial question of how new ideas emerge still remains to be answered. This talk gives an overview on contemporary efforts to understand human problem solving and creativity. Topics to be discussed are the role of insight in creative problem solving, including affective and cognitive components, mental set and fixation, and the extent to which Aha! experiences predict correct solutions. Recent studies converge on the finding that the Aha! experience is best regarded as a multi-dimensional construct with three components: Joy of discovery, confidence in being correct and a feeling that the idea emerges all at once. But how can ideas suddenly appear in consciousness, seemingly without effort? What is contributed by unconscious processes? What is known about the underlying cognitive process of restructuring the problem representation? I will present an innovative task domain that I developed in order to make Aha! experiences tractable in the lab. In the magic trick paradigm, a series of magic tricks is presented as problem solving task, challenging observers to find out how the magician achieves the magic effect. If they succeed, strong Aha! experiences are triggered. On the cognitive level, generating non-obvious ideas requires breaking free from unwarranted assumptions and constraints. Therefore, I will also discuss research on escaping fixation and mental set. When prior knowledge and experience prime incorrect approaches, it is difficult to break down those self-imposed barriers. In some cases, however, cues or training can be helpful to overcome fixation. Another key topic is the accuracy effect of insight: When the solution to a problem comes to mind accompanied by an Aha! experience, it is more likely to be accurate compared to solutions where this feeling of epiphany is missing. The accuracy effect has been shown repeatedly, holds across task domains and remains stable when potential confounds are excluded. This finding supports the idea that feelings of Aha! signal correctness, emotionally marking some ideas as novel and surprising. Such an intuitive sense of success is clearly adaptive. Possible causes and consequences of the effect will be discussed.
Anna Abraham
Psychologist and neuroscientist, E. Paul Torrance Professor in the Mary Frances College of Education, University of Georgia, USA. Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development. Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” and Editor of “The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination”. Scientific interests: interdisciplinary examination of fundamentally human capacities such as creative thinking and other core aspects of the imagination including the reality-fiction distinction, self and social cognition, mental time travel, mental state reasoning, and aesthetic experience.
Is the right hemisphere the seat of the creative brain? Do psychedelic drugs enhance creativity? Does mental illness accompany creativity? These are some of the many polemic questions about creativity that have long been of interest to researchers and the general public alike. In our attempt to understand how creative minds operate, we favor explanations that are eccentric. It is as though any explanation for creativity, this seemingly magical phenomenon, must itself bear some inherent peculiarities to be convincing. When these notions come to be widespread and held as fact by many, academics often present them as pure myths that need to be debunked. Nonetheless, despite all the pronouncements and evidence to the contrary, creativity "myths" tend to persist. The question is why? In this lecture, Professor Anna Abraham explores dominant notions that abound about the creative brain and how they come about. In doing so, she unravels their roots and their truths.
Moderator | Mário Simões
Retired Professor of Psychiatry and Consciousness Sciences, Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, Portugal. Scientific interests: psychology and psychophysiology of altered states of consciousness; ethnomedicine; human exceptional experiences and psychology and spirituality.
2nd session
Rainer Goebel
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Founding director of the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC). Scientific interests: neuronal representations in the brain and how they are processed to enable specific perceptual and cognitive functions; neural correlates of visual awareness; clinical applications in brain computer interfaces (BCIs) and neurofeedback studies.
Michael Hanchett Hanson
Director, Masters Concentration in Creativity and Cognition, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Member of the Chair, Homo Creativus, l'Université de Paris-Cité, France. Secretary, International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI); Editor, Creativity in Practice series, Routledge. Scientific interests: systemsbased analyses of creative development across lifespan and creative development within educational contexts.
This talk discusses what it could mean to take a systems view of creativity within education, based on developmental systems perspectives, sociocultural systems principles, distributed cognition theory, and Gregory Bateson’s model of deuterolearning. These are the basic principles of the participatory creativity framework, which has been developed specifically with education in mind. The methods, objectives, and evaluations of such an approach end up being different than individualist approaches in a number of ways. As someone who has done research in education and taught teacher for over 20 years, I also believe that the systems view of creative work is also a much better fit with the objectives of effective education overall than individualist approaches.
We will start by discussing some of the educational methods and objectives that are part of such an approach. Then I will review data from studies that have inspired and also illuminate this approach can look like in practice: a 5-year study of an intensive theater-based program targeted primarily to at-risk youth; a study of the methods and outcomes of an elementary school art program in New York City run by the Guggenheim museum; a study of role profiles in Maker Space collaborations; and Gregory Bateson’s well known study of the learning patterns of dolphins from the 1960s.
Lucia Melloni
Head of the Neural Circuits, Consciousness, and Cognition Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany, and Research Professor, Department of Neurology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, USA. Scientific interests: understanding the neural underpinnings of how we see (perception), how and why we experience what we see (consciousness), and how those experiences become imprinted in our brain (learning and memory), as well as the interplay between these processes.
There are many mysteries in the universe. One of the most significant, often considered the final frontier in science, is understanding how our subjective experience, or consciousness, emerges from the collective action of neurons in biological systems. While substantial progress has been made over the past decades, a unified and widely accepted explanation of the neural mechanisms underpinning consciousness remains elusive. The field is rife with theories that frequently provide contradictory explanations of the phenomenon. To accelerate progress, we have adopted a new model of science: adversarial collaboration in team science. Our goal is to test theories of consciousness in an adversarial setting. Adversarial collaboration offers a unique way to bolster creativity and rigor in scientific research by merging the expertise of teams with diverse viewpoints. Ideally, we aim to harness collective intelligence, embracing various perspectives, to expedite the uncovering of scientific truths. In this talk, I will highlight the effectiveness (and challenges) of this approach using selected case studies, showcasing its potential to counter biases, challenge traditional viewpoints, and foster innovative thought. Through the joint design of experiments, teams incorporate a competitive aspect, ensuring a comprehensive exploration of problems. This method underscores the importance of structured conflict and diversity in propelling scientific advancement and innovation.
Marilyn Schlitz
Professor of Transpersonal Psychology, Sofia University, Bulgaria, and CEO/President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute of Noetic Sciences, USA. Social scientist, award-winning author, filmmaker, and dynamic public speaker. She has published several books and hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and popular publications, and has lectured in diverse venues across the world, including the United Nations. Scientific interests: clinical, laboratory, and field-based research into consciousness, human transformation, and healing.
The link between psi and creativity has been explored since the early days of psychical research. Frederic Myers was among the first to explore the evidence of psi and genius based on spontaneous cases, arguing that both are characterized by an uprush from the subliminal mind to conscious awareness. Likewise, Walker Franklin Prince reported psi experiences among many highly creative individuals, including writers, poets and painters. This lecture will explore the rich history of psychical research, providing a context for more contemporary investigations that have studied the creative imagination and psi under laboratory conditions. While creativity and psi are elusive, spontaneous, and difficult to control, results of recent research indicate that work with creative populations, and under conditions that elicit the creative imagination, are productive and compelling avenues for the study of psi phenomena. A review of the literature will be offered and informed by a theory of mind that articulates a fluid boundary between inner and outer experiences.
Morten Kringelbach
Professor of Neuroscience, Universities of Oxford, UK, and Aarhus, Denmark. Founding Director of Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College. His research uses advanced analysis methods on precise paradigms in healthy people, as well as in at-risk and diseased populations. Scientific interests: reverse-engineer the human brain to elucidate the heuristics that allow us to survive and flourish.
For Aristotle, the goal of human life was to live well, to flourish, and to ultimately have a good life. He conceptualised this as “eudaimonia”, a concept distinct from “hedonia” or pleasure, coming from hedus, a Greek word for the sweet taste of honey. Over the last decade, we have been making significant progress in understanding how the brain orchestrates hedonia but here I will focus on neuroimaging studies of the ‘sweet anticipation’ of music showing not only how music leads to pleasure, but also to meaning making and thriving. Over longer timescales these experiences can give rise to both flourishing and suffering, providing meaning and purpose to life. I will discuss the evidence from whole-brain modelling of neuroimaging data including jazz improvisation for orchestrating eudaimonia, and propose future strategies for exploring the deep remaining questions.
W1 - Room Medicoteca; without translation - bring your laptop
Moderator | Miguel Castelo-Branco
Full Professor, University of Coimbra, Portugal. Affiliate Professor, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands, where he has held a Professorship in Psychology in 2000. Before, Postdoctoral fellow, Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research. Director of IBILI and Scientific Coordinator of the National Functional Brain Imaging Network. Director of CIBIT and former Director of ICNAS, University of Coimbra. Scientific interests: sensory and perceptual neuroscience, and neurobiology of decision-making; social cognition and reward in health and disease, with a focus on autism research.
Invited presenter | Penousal Machado
Associate Professor, Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, and coordinator of the Cognitive and Media Systems group of CISUC, Portugal. President of SPECIES (Society for the Promotion of Evolutionary Computation). Author of more than 200 refereed journals and conference papers and recipient of several scientific awards, his work was presented in venues such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art and MoMA, NY, USA. Scientific interests: artificial intelligence; evolutionary computation; computational creativity; information visualization.
Invited presenter | Tiago Martins
Assistant Professor, University of Coimbra, Portugal. Cross-media designer and researcher of the Computational Design and Visualization lab (CDV), a multidisciplinary research laboratory of the Cognitive and Media Systems Group (CMS) of the Centre of Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC). Scientific interests: Generative Design and Art, Evolutionary Computation, Computational Creativity.
In this workshop we will delve into the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence, blending insights from neuroscience and computer science. We'll explore how evolutionary thinking and concepts inspired by biology can inform and enhance computational approaches to creativity. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in interactive demonstrations and practical sessions, getting hand-on experience with tools designed to foster, support, and augment human creativity, with a focus on co-creative systems, where humans and AI work together to a common goal. The participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops.
W2 - Room Conferências; without translation
Moderator | Rui Costa
President and CEO, Allen Institute, Washington, and Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, Columbia University, New York, USA. Scientific interests: molecular, cellular and systems mechanisms of action generation, sequence and skill learning, goal-directed actions versus habits, across-level approach to study cognitive and sensorimotor disorders (PD, OCD, and autism).
Invited presenters | Mark Baldwin and Nicola Clayton
Activating the brain and body so that this meeting of corporal and cerebral minds results in an automatic response is sometimes called improvisation. This territory can be difficult to reach but we will guide you through some simple tasks to help you connect with your inner improvising self. Make it up, make mistakes, make movement, make it your own. “Blasted with ecstasy...” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Soliloquy from Act III, Ophelia).
W3 - Room Braga; without translation
Moderator | Etzel Cardeña
Thorsen Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP), Department of Psychology, Lund University, Sweden. Scientific interests: the psychology of anomalous experiences/non-ordinary mental expressions, including parapsychological phenomena; neurophenomenology of hypnosis, meditation and dissociation; stream of consciousness.
Invited presenter | Christine Simmonds-Moore
In this workshop, we will explore the interactions between personality, a mild alteration in consciousness and synesthetic experiences. The workshop will begin with a brief introduction about synesthesia (the experience of more than one sensory modality by a single stimulus, as in musical tones being associated with colors). Participants will be invited to complete a short personality measure and will then listen to a mild hypnotic induction. This will be followed by suggestions to experience different stimuli in creative ways. Stimuli will include different sounds and other stimuli. Then participants will be invited to draw or mould the sound using playdoh. At the end we will discuss how participants manifested the stimuli in novel, creative ways.
W4 - Room Auditorium; there will be simultaneous translation - bring your mobile
Moderator | Nuno Sousa
Professor at the School of Medicine, University of Minho. Director of the Clinical Academic Center (2CA) - Braga and Researcher at ICVS, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. Scientific interests: neurobiology of stress and brain network plasticity.
Invited presenter | Pedro Abrunhosa
At the age of 16 he studied Analysis, Composition and History of Music at Porto School of Music, and, later, at the Conservatory, Porto, Portugal. He got into music through the erudite path; from the most complex to the simplest, towards the purification of language. When he got to jazz, he was a jazz scholar and founded the Porto Jazz School. When he arrived at rock music, he had a backpack full of history and rigor. In 1994 he released his first album “Viagens” and he is now finishing his ninth. In his multi-platinum albums, he reveals his powerful writing, leaving songs that join so many other hymns, legends, adages. With thousands of concerts and sold-out venues, he combines the stage with lectures and discussions in the business and academic world.
One of the most fascinating questions that musical creativity suggests is its reference to a primeval genesis of sound as a communication process; in fact anthropology (and archeology) do not rule out the hypothesis of bodily sounds (guttural or percussed), as well as sounds produced by the impact of materials or woodwinds on hollow wood, as the cradle of language and, naturally, music. The semantics and lexicon that we use today would be nothing more than a very slow and effective evolution of this primordial music. This is why a return to silence can be initiatory, not in the metaphysical sense but as a revealing of thought. That is: silence as black matter from which ‘thought’ explodes. Music included. This experience of 'hearing silence' and its metamorphoses (all sound is the transformation of silence) can trigger psychological, memory and sensitive processes that border on the hypnotic. This workshop starts from this assumption and leads to an experience of the senses that we would eventually give shape to in the form of a musical piece.
3rd session
Stefan Schmidt
Professor of Systemic Family Therapy and Head of the Academic Section of Systemic Health Research, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Centre, Freiburg, Germany. Scientific interests: systems approaches in health research, psychophysiology, consciousness research, mindfulness meditation, experimental parapsychology, exceptional experiences and placebo research.
Sergio Neuenschwander
Full Professor, Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil. Scientific interests: neuronal mechanisms of visual perception; role of cortical dynamics in perceptual organization; information transfer in the retinogeniculate system.
As a form of creative art, Cinema presents a unique construction of reality. By combining narrative and visual storytelling techniques, movies create a rich sensory experience, enabling spectators to feel, see, and emotionally connect with the cinematic content. This perspective allows the audience to immerse in the narrative's highs and lows firsthand, transcending mere observation. The true beauty of Cinema resides in its ability to evoke sensory experience transformation and resonance as if the spectators were part of an ongoing fictional world. I will begin my presentation by explaining the neuronal mechanisms considered relevant for image representation, drawing from our experimental data in the visual system, including the retina, the lateral geniculate nucleus, and the visual cortex. In particular, I will focus on the debate of enhanced neuronal activity versus temporal coding as the critical mechanism for visual binding and attention. I will then explore how movies disrupt and challenge conventional perspectives on image representation, revealing the constructive nature of perception. As an illustration, I will showcase examples from collaborative artwork with Rivane Neuenschwander and highlight the documentary and fictional contributions of Cao Guimarães. Through these insights, I aim to establish a basis for discussing how our internal perceptual organization drives creativity in various artistic endeavors.
Frederick Barrett
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Faculty of Neuroscience, and Psychological and Brian Sciences, Johns Hopkins University; Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, USA. Scientific interests: the neural basis of cognition and affect; the cognitive neuroscience of music, and the mechanisms underlying acute and enduring effects of psychedelic drugs.
Musical improvisation is an enduring art with a rich history of creative output and provides a model for the study of the neuroscience of creativity. Anecdotal evidence and some recent empirical evidences has suggested that psychedelic drugs may be powerful modulators (possibly enhancers) of creativity. We will explore evidence for psychedelic alteration of creativity and propose an approach to combined use of music and psychedelics as tools for the investigation of the neural basis of creativity.
Marcus du Sautoy
Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford, UK. Author of eight books and two plays, he has presented numerous radio and TV series including “The Story of Maths” for BBC. He works extensively with a range of arts organisations bringing science alive for the public. Scientific interests: understanding the world of symmetry using zeta functions, a classical tool from number theory.
Will a machine ever compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, paint a masterpiece or prove a mathematical theorem? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference? Based on his book The Creativity Code, Marcus du Sautoy explores the new developments in AI that are shaking up the status quo and asks how long it might be before machines come up with something creative, and whether they might jolt us into being more imaginative in turn.
Edward Kelly
Professor, Division of Perceptual Studies, Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA. Co-director of Ray Westphal Neuroimaging Laboratory. Scientific interests: neuroimaging studies of exceptional psi subjects and psi-conducive states of consciousness, and both scientific and philosophical theories of consciousness and mind/brain relations.
Scientific study of creativity has so far been carried on almost entirely, whether explicitly or implicitly, within a context provided by the worldview known as “physicalism,” which represents current majority opinion among mainstream workers in areas such as biology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychology and the behavioral sciences, and which currently constitutes the received wisdom of “opinion elites” more generally in most sectors of modern societies worldwide. This worldview essentially pictures reality as consisting at bottom of tiny bits of some sort of insentient material “stuff” moving around in fields of force in accordance with mathematical laws, and everything else that exists as necessarily emerging somehow from that most-basic stuff. We ourselves are nothing more than immensely complicated biological machines, operating deterministically, so there can be no such thing as free will. Our minds and consciousness are manufactured entirely by neurophysiological processes occurring in our brains, so there can also be no such thing as postmortem survival. On a more cosmic scale we see no sign of final causes or any sort of transcendent order. On the contrary, the overall scheme of nature appears in the end to be utterly devoid of meaning or purpose. This bleak and arguably destructive worldview purports to be justified by the findings of modern science, but it is more accurately characterized as a philosophical doctrine grounded in the highly developed classical physics of the late 19th century. Moreover, recent developments in areas including physics itself, the psychobiology of mind and consciousness, and philosophy of mind have collectively undermined its empirical basis and exposed the need to replace it with an expanded science-based worldview which is consistent with the revolutionary advances of more recent physics, and which can potentially accommodate a variety of poorly-understood but significant realities of human experience, including in particular extreme forms of creativity, mystical experiences of various types, and paranormal or “psi” phenomena, which appear deeply interconnected both psychologically and historically. The general picture of reality currently emerging as an alternative to the prevailing physicalism amounts philosophically to its virtual opposite - some form of realist idealism which takes consciousness as fundamental and derives all else from that. My talk will briefly summarize these developments and sketch some ways in which they can impact future scientific work on creativity, ameliorating present defects and difficulties and leading toward both deeper understanding and increased availability for empirical study and application.
Moderator | Axel Cleeremans
Participants | Pedro Abrunhosa, Nicola Clayton and Mark Baldwin, Marilyn Schlitz, Sergio Neuenschwander
In this closing event moderated by Axel Cleeremans we will once again return to the central question of the symposium: What is the process of creativity? Speakers from different backgrounds will exchange ideas and offer their own perspective on the issue. Nicola Clayton, Mark Baldwin, Marilyn Schlitz and Sergio Neuenschwander will be joined by the Portuguese artist Pedro Abrunhosa to debate, interact with the public, and perform in an informal, engaging atmosphere intended to promote … creativity!
General Information
There will be simultaneous translation from English to Portuguese and vice-versa, excluding worshops.
Secretariat
Fundação BIAL
Av. da Siderurgia Nacional
4745-457 Coronado (S. Romão e S. Mamede)
Portugal
Tel.: +351 22 986 6150
info@bialfoundation.com
Symposium Venue Rooms - map with sessions and workshops rooms.
Where to have lunch - several possibilities inside or near the Symposium’s Venue Casa do Médico.
Symposium’s venue
Casa do Médico
Rua Delfim Maia, 405
4200-256 Porto
Portugal
Tel.: +351 22 507 0100
Hotels
HF Ipanema Porto ****
Rua do Campo Alegre, 156/172
4150-169 Porto, Portugal
Tel.: +351 226 075 059
Fax.: +351 226 063 339
E-mail: hfipanemaporto@hfhotels.com
Make your reservation directly with the Hotel (do refer Fundação Bial and the Symposium)
Tel: +351 22 619 4100
https://14simposiofundacaobial.hfhotels.com
HF Fénix Porto ****
Rua Gonçalo Sampaio, 282
4150 - 365 Porto, Portugal
Tel.: +351 226 071 800
Fax.: +351 226 071 810
E-mail: hffenixporto@hfhotels.com
Bus Transfer
We will provide bus transfer from the hotels to the symposium’s venue, and vice-versa.
Bus schedule HF Ipanema Porto.
Bus schedule HF Fénix Porto.
Metro - from the Hotel Ipanema Porto/Fénix Porto to Casa do Médico.
Publications, Projects & Evaluation Form
- Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Projects – Final Results
- Projects – Preliminary Results
- Evaluation Form
Peer-reviewed publications – Grants for Scientific Research
From 1994 to date, the BIAL Foundation has supported the development of 847 research projects, which has resulted in the publication of 2457 articles, 1957 of which in indexed journals, 1718 in journals with an average impact factor of 4.2, and 383 in journals with an impact factor greater than or equal to 5. In February 2024, there was a substantial number of citations (45.764), with 591 publications cited more than 20 times.
The list of peer-reviewed publications stemming from the supported research projects is available here. These publications may also be searched in the BIAL Foundation’s online database, which gathers and makes widely available information on the projects and their outputs.
Projects – Final Results
Posters with final results presented by the BIAL Foundation grant holders and/or available at www.bialfoundation.com.
2016
76/16 – “Unleashing the hidden powers of the mind through manipulating belief in cognitive enhancement devices” – only abstract availableResearchers: Michiel van Elk, Uffe Schjoedt, Marcel Brass
Institutions: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands); School of Culture and Society - Department of the Study of Religion, University of Arhus (Denmark)
Duration: 2017/03 – 2022/10
Abstract
206/16 – “Developing a neurofunctional intervention for emotion regulation under stress”
Researchers: Pedro Morgado, Carles Soriano Mas, Paulo Marques, Pedro Moreira, Ricardo Magalhães
Institutions: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute - ICVS, School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal); Department of Psychiatry, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute - IDIBELL, Barcelona (Spain)
Duration: 2017/01 – 2023/01
Abstract
249/16 – “Healthy aging and economic decision-making: Neuropsychophysiological examination of the affect-integration-motivation framework of decision-making in aging brain”
Researchers: João Marques-Teixeira, Rui Mata, Isabel Martins, Giuseppe Danese, Ana Gonçalves, Carina Fernandes, Rita Pasion
Institution: Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto (Portugal)
Duration: 2018/02 – 2023/04
Abstract
280/16 – “Probing the unconscious mind with instrumental hypnosis”
Researchers: Mathieu Landry, Jérôme Sackur, Amir Raz
Institutions: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, École Normale Supérieure, Paris (France); Raz Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, McGill University, Montreal (Canada)
Duration: 2018/06 – 2023/11
Abstract
292/16 – “Oxytocin: On the psychophysiology of trust and cooperation”
Researchers: Diana Prata, James Rilling, Manuel Lopes, Duarte Ferreira, Daniel Martins, Pedro Levy
Institutions: FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (Portugal); Emory University, Atlanta (USA)
Duration: 2017/10 – 2023/11
Abstract
2018
37/18 – “Decoding the neuron-astrocyte dialogue that supports cognitive processing”Researchers: João Filipe Oliveira, Luísa Pinto, Diana Nascimento, Sónia Gomes, Inês Caetano, João Viana, João Luís Machado, Daniela Sofia Abreu, Sara Barsanti
Institution: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute - ICVS, Universidade do Minho, Braga (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2019/03 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
67/18 – “Electrophysiological correlates of size-distance integration”
Researcher: Irene Sperandio, Louis Renoult
Institution: Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Rovereto (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2020/11 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
68/18 – “Investigating biochemical mechanisms underlying mind-matter interactions: Effect of intention on human stem cell properties via cryptochrome”
Researchers: Yung-Jong Shiah, George T.-J. Huang
Institutions: Graduate Institute of Counseling Psychology and Rehabilitation Counseling, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (China); University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis (USA)
Duration: 2019/03 – 2023/03
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
81/18 – “Meditation as a first-person method in the neuroscience of consciousness: A comparison of the informativeness and reliability of first person data collected from meditators and non-meditators in a novel Libet paradigm”
Researchers: Stefan Schmidt, Sebastian Kübel, Marc Wittmann, Han-Gue Jo
Institution: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Freiburg (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2020/11 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
85/18 – “Role of NT3/TrkC in the regulation of fear”
Researcher: Mónica Santos
Institution: Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/03 – 2023/07
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
89/18 – “National survey of "Cases of Reincarnation Type" in Brazil”
Researchers: Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Jim Tucker, Lucam Moraes, Sandra Carvalho
Institutions: Research Center in Spirituality and Health - NUPES, School of Medicine, Federal University of Juiz de Fora – UFJF (Brazil); Division of Perceptual Studies - DOPS, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (USA)
Estimated duration: 2019/04 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
110/18 – “A randomized trial: Extraordinary experiences and performance on psi tasks related to meditation”
Researchers: Jennifer Kim Penberthy, Marieta Pehlivanova, Elizabeth Hanchak, Leslie Hubbard
Institution: Division of Perceptual Studies - DOPS, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (USA)
Duration: 2020/05 – 2024/01
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
135/18 – “The physiological role of circadian rhythms in memory”
Researchers: Luísa Lopes, Miguel Remondes, Ana Morgado, Joana Coelho
Institution: Instituto de Medicina Molecular - João Lobo Antunes, Lisboa (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/01 – 2023/01
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
148/18 – “Voice perception in the visually deprived brain: Behavioral and electrophysiological insights”
Researchers: Tatiana Conde e Magro, Ana Pinheiro, César Lima, João Sarzedas
Institutions: Centro de Investigação em Ciência Psicológica - CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal); Centro de Investigação e de Intervenção Social, ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Portugal)
Duration: 2020/02 – 2023/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
156/18 – “Examining observer effects on random processes: A correlation matrix” – only abstract available
Researcher: Ana Flores
Institution: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute - ICVS, School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/07 – 2024/02
Abstract
169/18 – “Temporal decoding of selective recollection with psychophysiology”
Researchers: Alexa Morcom, Arjen Alink
Institution: School of Psychology, University of Sussex (UK)
Duration: 2019/06 – 2022/05
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
188/18 – “COping with PAin through Hypnosis, mindfulness and Spirituality (COPAHS)”
Researchers: Maria Alexandra Ferreira Valente, José Luís Pais Ribeiro, Mark Philip Jensen, Ana Filipa Pimenta, Rui Miguel Costa, Melissa Day
Institutions: William James Center for Research, ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa (Portugal); Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle (USA)
Duration: 2019/10 – 2023/01
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
198/18 – “Sense of agency in the Ouija board experience” – only abstract available
Researchers: Gethin Hughes, Peter Gooding
Institution: Department of Psychology, University of Essex (UK)
Estimated duration: 2019/04 – 2024/04
Abstract
204/18 – “Boosting WM capacity by strengthening the oscillatory functional fronto-parietal pathway”
Researcher: Vincenzo Romei
Institution: Centre for studies and research in Cognitive Neuroscience - CsrNC, Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy)
Duration: 2019/03 – 2023/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
210/18 – “Mind-matter interactions and the frontal lobes of the brain”
Researchers: Morris Freedman, Robert Chen, Malcolm Binns
Institutions: Division of Neurology, Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto (Canada); Division of Neurology, University Health Network - UHN, Toronto (Canada)
Duration: 2019/07 – 2023/11
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
220/18 – “Mind-shaped body: A new conceptual framework beyond the placebo effect connecting expectations to disease outcome”
Researchers: Francesco Pagnini, Paolo Banfi, Cesare Cavalera, Eleonora Volpato
Institutions: Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy); Respiratory Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, Milan (Italy)
Duration: 2019/02 – 2022/03
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
252/18 – “Spiritual states induced by ayahuasca, and the involvement of the reward system”
Researchers: Miguel Castelo-Branco, Gisela Lima, Miguel Raimundo, Pedro Fonseca, Carla Cavaleiro, Lorena Petrella, Célia Cabral, Antero Abrunhosa
Institution: Institute for Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health - ICNAS, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/10 – 2022/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
287/18 – “More thankful, less stressed? Gratitude and physiological reactions to stress”
Researchers: Brenda O'Connell, Stephen Gallagher, Brian Leavy
Institutions: Centre for Mental Health & Community Research, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University (Ireland); Study of Stress, Anxiety and Health Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick (Ireland)
Duration: 2019/09 – 2023/10
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
296/18 – “The power of mind: Altering cutaneous sensations by autosuggestion”
Researchers: Elena Azáñon, Esther Kuehn, Kasia Myga
Institution: Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg (Germany)
Duration: 2019/11 – 2023/11
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
306/18 – “The neural circuitry underlying error monitoring during social cognition”
Researchers: Teresa Sousa, Miguel Castelo-Branco, João Castelhano, Verónica Figueiredo, Andreia Pereira
Institution: Institute for Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health - ICNAS, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/10 – 2022/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
320/18 – “The role of interneurons in spatial memory”
Researchers: Tiago Gil Oliveira, Patrícia Monteiro, Vítor Pinto, André Miranda, Ricardo Silvestre, Luísa Marinha, Rafaela Morais-Ribeiro
Institution: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute - ICVS, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2019/10 – 2024/04
331/18 – “Frontostriatal neurophysiological underpins of decision-making”
Researchers: Hugo Leite-Almeida, Madalena Esteves, Marco Rafael Guimarães, Ana Margarida Cunha, Joana Mendes, Armando Almeida
Institution: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute - ICVS, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2020/02 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
336/18 – “Research-inspired cognitive empowerment: Modulating Episodic Memory through Egocentric Navigational Training (MEMENT)” – only abstract available
Researchers: Giorgia Committeri, Carlo Sestieri, Matteo Frisoni, Agustina Fragueiro, Annalisa Tosoni
Institution: Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical sciences, Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies, University G. d' Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara (Italy)
Duration: 2021/09 – 2023/04
Abstract
347/18 – “Driving synaptic plasticity in motor-to-visual neural pathways to enhance action prediction”
Researchers: Alessio Avenanti, Marco Zanon
Institution: Department of Psychology, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Duration: 2019/10 – 2023/06
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
355/18 – “The implicit cognition of interpersonal attraction”
Researchers: Joana Arantes, John Wearden, Mavilde Arantes, Emanuel Albuquerque
Institution: Psychology Research Center - CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal)
Duration: 2019/05 – 2024/02
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
359/18 – “A Comparison of NN-DMT, Changa & 5-MeO-DMT and the Near-death Experience: Qualitative analyses and reviews of the neuroscience”
Researchers: Pascal Michael, David Luke
Institutions: Department of Psychology, Social Work and Counselling, Greenwich University, London (UK); Psychedelic Research Group, Imperial College London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2020/01 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
366/18 – “Transpersonal imagery and bereavement: The psychomanteum and virtual reality”
Researchers: Marilyn Schlitz, Dorote Lucci, Donna Dulo, Kelly Yi, Lincoln Nguyen
Institutions: Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Foundation, Palo Alto, California (USA); Sofia University, Palo Alto, California (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/05 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
2020
24/20 – “World-relative object motion: How the brain detects object motion while we are moving” – only abstract availableResearcher: Valentina Sulpizio
Institution: IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome (Italy)
Duration: 2021/10 – 2024/01
Abstract
26/20 – “Anticipation and experience of stressful situations and their psychobiological impact on providing pre-hospital emergency medicine care”
Researchers: Mark Wetherell, Jeff Doran
Institutions: Department of Psychology, Northumbria University Newcastle (UK); Great North Air Ambulance Service (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
73/20 – “Cerebrovascular hypothesis of stress-induced behavioral alterations”
Researchers: Ana Paula Silva, Filipa Baptista, Ana Rita Gaspar, Ricardo Leitão, Catarina Gomes
Institution: Centre for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology - CIBB, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/09
79/20 – “Redefining the boundaries between cognition and action through the psychophysiological investigation of binary decisions”
Researchers: Michele Scaltritti, Simone Sulpizio
Institutions: Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Rovereto (Italy); Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Duration: 2021/02 – 2023/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
86/20 – “Age-related changes in motor-cognitive dual-tasking: An electrophysiological investigation of interference at the level of sub-task elements”
Researchers: Subhobrata Mitra, Christina Howard
Institution: Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
107/20 – “Attitudes and beliefs as predictors of psi effects in a pseudo-gambling task” – only abstract available
Researcher: Lance Storm
Institution: School of Psychology, University of Adelaide (Australia)
Duration: 2022/01 – 2023/11
Abstract
108/20 – “A telephone telepathy study: Does genetic relatedness influence psychic abilities?”
Researcher: Helané Wahbeh
Institution: Institute of Noetic Sciences, Novato (USA)
Duration: 2021/03 – 2023/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
123/20 – “A latent profile analysis and structural equation modelling of paranormal belief, psychopathological symptoms, and well-being”
Researchers: Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan
Institution: Health, Psychology and Communities, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Duration: 2021/02 – 2023/06
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
129/20 – “Investigating the role of expertise in the predictive coding framework combining time resolved neural and behavioural evidence”
Researchers: Marie Smith, Inês Mares, Louise Ewing, Fraser Smith
Institution: Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/08 – 2024/02
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
131/20 – “From inner to dyadic connection: The effect of mindfulness intervention on mother-infant bio-behavioural synchrony”
Researchers: Maria Spinelli, Chiara Suttora, Filippo Zappasodi
Institutions: Department of Neurosciences, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, Università degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara (Italy); Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/04
Abstract| Oral presentation - slide
169/20 – “Investigation of the phenomenology and impact of spontaneous and direct After-Death Communications (ADCs)”
Researchers: Callum Cooper, Evelyn Elsaesser
Institution: Research Centre for Psychology & Social Sciences, University of Northampton (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/02 – 2024/04
Abstract| Oral presentation - slide
174/20 – “In your skin: The psychophysiology of touch observation” – only abstract available
Researcher: Bettina Forster
Institution: Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Social Sciences, City, University of London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/03
Abstract
191/20 – “Understanding the brain mechanisms of death-denial for fostering mindfulness-based existential resilience” – only abstract available
Researchers: Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
Institutions: The Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center, University of Haifa (Israel); Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University (Israel)
Duration: 2022/01 – 2024/01
Abstract
203/20 – “Dynamic eye-movement encoding in human cortex using ultra-high field fMRI (7Tesla)” – only abstract available
Researcher: Alessio Fracasso
Institution: Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Scotland (UK)
Duration: 2021/10 – 2023/09
Abstract
212/20 – “Comparing cognitive styles among parapsychology researchers, psi-believers, and skeptics”
Researchers: Marieta Pehlivanova, Bruce Greyson
Institution: Division of Perceptual Studies - DOPS, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/03 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
216/20 – “Analysis of an entropic anomaly in 23 years of truly random data” – only abstract available
Researcher: Dean Radin
Institution: Institute of Noetic Sciences, Novato (USA)
Duration: 2022/01 – 2023/02
Abstract
249/20 – “Physiological correlates to variations in ultra-weak photon emissions during periods of focused intent”
Researcher: John Kruth
Institution: Rhine Research Center, Durham (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/05 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
258/20 – “In God's shoes: Embodying the avatar of the supreme moral authority modulates psychophysiological indices of one's own morality”
Researchers: Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Michael Schepisi, Althea Frisanco, Gaetano Tieri
Institution: Department of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Duration: 2021/06 – 2023/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
276/20 – “Beyond your own body: Extending the bodily self to the neuroaesthetics of interactions”
Researchers: Andrea Orlandi, Matteo Candidi, Martina Fanghella, Quentin Moreau, Ugo Giulio Pesci
Institution: Department of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/02 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
287/20 – “Title: Emotional distraction: Contextual modulation of attentional capture” – only abstract available
Researchers: Maurizio Codispoti, Cristina Filannino
Institution: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy)
Duration: 2021/04 – 2023/02
Abstract
309/20 – “Assessing static and dynamic effects of mindfulness meditation on peripersonal space”
Researchers: Luca Simione, Salvatore Chiarella
Institution: Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council – CNR, Rome (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/11 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
311/20 – “How body ownership shapes tactile awareness: Inducing phantom sensations and measuring their electrophysiological correlates in immersive virtual reality”
Researchers: Carlotta Fossataro, Valentina Bruno, Alice Rossi Sebastiano, Francesca Garbarini
Institution: Department of Psychology, University of Turin (Italy)
Duration: 2021/04 – 2024/01
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
344/20 – “Title: Evaluation of psychological traits, pain perception and muscular strength in trance experts”
Researchers: Olivia Gosseries, Paul Hollanders, Yannick Lafon, Aminata Bicego
Institution: GIGA Research Center, GIGA-Consciousness, University of Liège (Belgium)
Estimated duration: 2022/01 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
347/20 – “Open-label choice blindness: Exploring the mechanism underlying auto-suggestion”
Researchers: Jeremy Olson, Despina Artenie, Ellen Langer, Jian Kong
Institutions: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusets General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA); Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge (USA)
duration: 2022/05 – 2023/09
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
360/20 – “Large scale online testing of psi abilities to identify and test talented individuals”
Researcher: Arnaud Delorme
Institution: Institute of Noetic Sciences, Novato (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/04 – 2024/04
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
369/20 – “A trait-and-state analysis of precognitive remote viewing focusing on gender, emotions, and pregnancy status” – only abstract available
Researchers: Julia Mossbridge, Mark Boccuzzi, Kirsten Cameron
Institutions: The Institute for Love and Time - TILT, Sebastopol (USA); Windbridge Institute, LLC, Tucson (USA)
Duration: 2021/01 – 2022/09
Abstract
384/20 – “Schema-based temporal memory in parietal cortex (SCHETEMP)”
Researchers: Matteo Frisoni, Paolo Capotosto
Institution: Department of Neurosciences, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Chieti – Pescara (Italy)
Duration: 2021/10 – 2023/11
Abstract | Oral presentation - slide
Projects – Preliminary Results
Abstracts of ongoing projects supported by the BIAL Foundation available at www.bialfoundation.com.
Should you need further information on any of these projects, please contact the Secretariat and we will be glad to introduce you to the researcher attending the symposium.
2016
269/16 – “Does Ganzfeld stimulation elicit a shift away from normal waking consciousness, and is this associated with ESP task success”Researcher: Chris Roe
Institution: Centre for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes (CSAPP), Division of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, The University of Northampton (UK)
Estimated duration: 2019/11 – 2024/04
Abstract
2018
160/18 – “Exploring the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation during sleep on fear extinction learning”Researchers: Carmelo Vicario, Michael A Nitsche, Vuk Markovic
Institutions: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund (Germany); Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2019/04 – 2024/04
Abstract
190/18 – “Ganzfeld ESP research: Building on lessons learned”
Researcher: Caroline Watt
Institution: Koestler Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh (UK)
Estimated duration: 2019/10 – 2024/05
Abstract
2020
36/20 – “The role of non-verbal behaviour on placebo and nocebo effects. Psychophysiological experiments”Researchers: Magne Arve Flaten, Hojjat Daniali, Per Aslaksen, Ted Kaptchuk, Mollie Ruben
Institutions: Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim (Norway); University of Tromsø (Norway); Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/02 – 2024/04
Abstract
41/20 – “Luminous dancing fairies in weightlessness: How gravity shapes conscious experiences”
Researcher: Elisa Ferrè
Institution: Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/12 – 2024/12
Abstract
47/20 – “Fear in action: How Pavlovian fear learning shapes goal-directed motor responses”
Researchers: Francesca Starita, Giuseppe di Pellegrino
Institutions: Centre for Studies and Research in Cognitive Neuroscience – CsrNC, Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy)
Duração: 2021/03 – 2024/03
Abstract
48/20 – “Investigating the relationship between sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), anomalous experiences, and precognitive performance”
Researchers: Elizabeth Roxburgh, David Vernon, Malcolm Schofield
Institutions: Psychology Department, Canterbury Christ Church University (UK); University of Derby (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/12 – 2024/11
Abstract
75/20 – “Psychophysiology of highly superior autobiographical memory: Shedding light on the mind of people who never forget”
Researchers: Valerio Santangelo, Sabrina Fagioli
Institutions: Department of Phylosophy, Social Sciences & Education, University of Perugia (Italy); Roma Tre University (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/09
Abstract
80/20 – “Mindfulness meditation state and trait through the eyes of brain computational modelling”
Researcher: Laura Marzetti
Institution: Department of Neurosciences, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzion Chieti – Pescara (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2025/03
Abstract
91/20 – “Mentation report analysis across distinct states of consciousness: A linguistic approach”
Researchers: Giulio Bernardi, Giulia Avvenuti, Michele Bellesi, Valentina Elce, Emanuela Merelli
Institutions: IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca (Italy); University of Camerino (Italy)
Duration: 2021/02 – 2024/02
Abstract
115/20 – “Living in a dream: Body and self-experience during waking and dream states in depersonalization”
Researchers: Jane Aspell, Anna Ciaunica, Bigna Lenggenhager, Jennifer Windt
Institution: School of Psychology and Sport Science, Anglia Ruskin University Higher Education Corporation, Chelmsford (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/04 – 2024/04
Abstract
116/20 – “Can the time needed to process visual information following a saccade be used to predict variations in neural measures of working memory and well-being?”
Researchers: Corinna Haenschel, John Barbur, Emsal Llapashtica
Institution: Department of Psychology, City, University of London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/04 – 2024/04
Abstract
134/20 – “Copy me, copy you: Investigating the development of facial mimicry”
Researchers: Carina de Klerk, Javier Andreu-Perez
Institution: Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/12 – 2025/05
Abstract
140/20 – “Stimulating compassion: Using transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) to probe compassionate behaviour”
Researcher: Sunjeev Kamboj
Institution: Department Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2022/02 – 2024/04
Abstract
146/20 – “The me and the I: Dissociating ownership and agency in sensorimotor processing”
Researchers: Ana Pinheiro, Sonja Kotz, Michael Scwartze
Institutions: Centro de Investigação em Ciência Psicológica – CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal); Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht (The Netherlands)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/08
Abstract
150/20 – “A swing between the inner and the outer worlds: Exploring the function of the frontal aslant tract with transcranial magnetic stimulation”
Researchers: Luigi Cattaneo, Sara Parmigiani
Institution: Center for Mind/Brain Sciences - CIMeC, University of Trento (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/08
Abstract
152/20 – “Investigation of non-inferential perception using a 3D-computer-assisted dowsing task”
Researchers: Jorge Moll, Julie Weingartner, Maria Stewart, Cristiano Junqueira
Institutions: D'Or Institute for Research and Education, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Scients Institute, Palo Alto (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/01 – 2024/12
Abstract
175/20 – “The role of nucleus accumbens in the perception of natural rewards”
Researchers: Carina Cunha, Ana João Rodrigues, Nivaldo Vasconcelos, Rodrigo Oliveira, Bárbara Coimbra, Ana Verónica Domingues, Gabriela Martins
Institutions: Life and Health Sciences Research Institute – ICVS, University of Minho, Braga (Portugal); Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University, New York City (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/06 – 2024/11
Abstract
181/20 – “Sleep and dreaming after a near-death experience. An exploratory study using wrist actigraphy”
Researchers: Nicole Lindsay, Natasha Tassell-Matamua, Rosemary Gibson
Institution: School of Psychology, Massey University, Palmerston North (New Zealand)
Estimated duration: 2021/11 – 2024/10
Abstract
186/20 – “Exploring the use of floatation tanks as a means to induce psi-conducive states of consciousness”
Researchers: Glenn Hitchman, Callum Cooper
Institution: Research Centre for Psychology & Social Sciences, University of Northampton (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/07 – 2024/06
Abstract
201/20 – “The control of attentional diversion: A psychophysiological approach”
Researchers: John Marsh, Federica Degno, Robert Hughes
Institutions: Perception, Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory, School of Psychology and Computer Science, University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UK); Royal Holloway University of London, Egham (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/09
Abstract
229/20 – “Sensory entrainment for improving spatial navigation”
Researchers: Mireia Torralba Cuello, Salvador Soto-Faraco, Lluis Fuentemilla, José Ángel Blat
Institutions: Center for Brain and Cognition, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain); University of Barcelona (Spain)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/08
Abstract
238/20 – “Decoding sound symbolism in visual cortex”
Researchers: Petra Vetter, Carolyn McGettigan
Institutions: Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg (Switzerland); University College London (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/11 – 2024/10
Abstract
241/20 – “The premotor roots of musical beat perception and imagery: A neurophysiological investigation”
Researchers: Carlotta Lega, Virginia Penhune, Luigi Cattaneo, Giorgio Lazzari
Institution: Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/09 – 2024/06
Abstract
252/20 – “Neurophysiological bases of decision-making processes: Dissociating risk and uncertainty in the human brain”
Researchers: Tiago Paiva, Carina Fernandes, Fernando Barbosa, João Marques-Teixeira, Fernando Ferreira-Santos, Carlos Seixas, Rita Pasion, Carlos Campos
Institution: Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/06 – 2024/05
Abstract
272/20 – “Advancements on the aware mind-brain: New insights about the neural correlates of meditation states and traits”
Researchers: Antonino Raffone, Vasil Kolev, Peter Malinowski, Juliana Yordanova, Roumen Kirov
Institutions: Department of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy); Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (Bulgaria); Liverpool John Moores University (UK)
Estimated duration: 2021/03 – 2024/08
Abstract
288/20 – “The origin of the sublime power in the brain: An integrated EEG-TMS study”
Researchers: Eleonora Maggioni, Paolo Brambilla, Giandomenico Schiena, Alice Chirico, Andrea Gaggioli, Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis, Flavia Carbone
Institutions: Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milan (Italy); Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy); Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2021/04 – 2024/03
Abstract
293/20 – “Closing the loop: Using real-time EEG to mutually enlighten first and third-person perspectives on the self”
Researchers: Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Lukas Hecker, Stefan Schmidt
Institution: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Freiburg (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/06
Abstract
315/20 – “Non-conscious influences on expected and subjective value in economic decisions”
Researchers: Fredrik Bergström, Jorge Manuel de Albuquerque Almeida, Johan Eriksson, Bruno de Sousa
Institution: Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioral Intervention, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/04
Abstract
316/20 – “The psychology of the living and the dead: Interpersonal psychology in the afterlife”
Researcher: André Mata
Institution: Centro de Investigação em Ciência Psicológica - CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/02 – 2025/01
Abstract
333/20 – “Mindfulness and psychedelics: A neurophenomenological approach to the characterization of acute and sustained response to DMT in experienced meditators”
Researchers: Milan Scheidegger, Daniel Meling, Michael Kometer, Dario Dornbierer
Institutions: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich (Switzerland); University Medical Center Freiburg (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/04
Abstract
358/20 – “Study of end-of-life paranormal phenomena recognized by palliative care health professionals in Portugal”
Researchers: Úrsula Dalcolmo, Manuela Bertão, Francisca Rêgo, Luísa Castro
Institution: Departamento de Medicina da Comunidade, Informação e Decisão em Saúde - MEDCIDS, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/03 – 2024/04
Abstract
372/20 – “Dynamics of meditation: The influence of intensive shamatha training on posture, perception, endogenous neural activity, and predictive anticipatory activity during meditation”
Researchers: Jonathan Schooler, Bruce Wallace, James Elliott
Institution: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara (USA)
Estimated duration: 2022/02 – 2025/01
Abstract
380/20 – “Neuroanatomical correlates of wellbeing in a mindfulness and religious exercises program”
Researchers: Paulo Dias, Ângela Leite, Bruno Nobre, Bruce Fischl
Institution: Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Braga (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2021/11 – 2024/11
Abstract
385/20 – “EEG activation in monozygotic and dizygotic twins to assess heritability of pre- and post-stimulus response to visual stimuli”
Researchers: William Bunney, Richard Stein, Julie Patterson
Institution: Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine (USA)
Estimated duration: 2022/01 – 2024/11
Abstract
387/20 – “AECKO: Towards a science of anomalous experience field studies”
Researchers: Bryan Williams, Gerald Solfvin
Institution: Psychical Research Foundation, Texas (USA)
Estimated duration: 2021/10 – 2024/06
Abstract
391/20 – “Illuminating the dreamer's perceptual experiences”
Researchers: Delphine Oudiette, Ken Paller, Susan Florczak, Karen Konkoly, Saba Al-youssef
Institutions : Institut du Cerveau, Paris (France); Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Northwestern University, Evanston (USA)
Estimated duration: 2022/02 – 2024/04
Abstract
2022
03/22 – “The power of imagination: Neural effects of imagined placebo intake”Researcher: Anne Schienle
Institution: Clinical Psychology, University of Graz (Austria)University, Evanston (USA)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2025/02
Abstract
06/22 – “Generating psi with enchanted spaces: A confirmatory study”
Researcher: James Houran
Institution: Integrated Knowledge Systsems - IKS, Chatham (USA)
Duration: 2023/02 – 2024/03
Abstract
20/22 – “From psychiatric disorder to spiritual gift: Phenomenology and cerebral correlates of hearing voices”
Researcher: Giulia Prete
Institution: Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, Università degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/06 – 2025/05
Abstract
23/22 – “Investigating biochemical mechanisms underlying mind-matter interactions: Effect of intention on human cervical cancer cells properties via cryptochrome”
Researchers: Yung-Jong Shiah, Chang-Tze Ricky Yu, Dean Radin
Institutions: Graduate Institute of Counseling Psychology and Rehabilitation Counseling, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan (China); Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan (China)
Estimated duration: 2023/05 – 2024/10
Abstract
27/22 – “EEG and behavioral correlates of forward and backward priming”
Researchers: Marc Wittmann, Jürgen Kornmeier, Mareike Wilson, Azadeh Mozhdefarahbakhsh
Institutions: Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2023/04 – 2026/04
Abstract
33/22 – “The influence of emotions on actions: Boosting brain network plasticity to ameliorate action control”
Researchers: Sara Borgomaneri, Vincenzo Romei
Institution: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/05 – 2025/05
Abstract
51/22 – “Enhanced well-being and psychological adjustment: The psychological benefits of paranormal endorsement”
Researchers: Neil Dagnall, Kenneth Drinkwater
Institution: Health, Psychology and Communities, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/06 – 2025/02
Abstract
65/22 – “Unintended returns of awareness during cardiopulmonary resuscitation”
Researchers: Charlotte Martial, Pauline Fritz, Alice Clerget
Institution: Coma Science Group, University of Liège (Belgium)
Estimated duration: 2023/02 – 2025/01
Abstract
68/22 – “Can a silent mind know thyself? The role of inner speech in self-awareness”
Researcher: Bo Yao
Institution: Department of Psychology, Lancaster University (UK)
Duração prevista/Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2025/02
Abstract
69/22 – “Psychometric validation of a questionnaire for assessing paranormal health beliefs and statistically modelling the effects of the construct on health outcomes longitudinally”
Researcher: Andrew Denovan
Institution: Centre for Cognition and Neuroscience, University of Huddersfield (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/06 – 2025/06
Abstract
70/22 – “An investigation into the nature of children's extra sensory experiences across various cultural contexts”
Researchers: Donna Thomas, Chris Roe, Callum Cooper, Kirsty Allan, Kate Adams
Institutions: School of Social Work, Care and Community, University of Central Lancashire (UK); Centre for Psychology and Sociological Sciences, University of Northampton (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2025/02
Abstract
74/22 – “COMP-S: Cultivating Compassionate Schools: The effects of an evidence-based compassionate mind training program for teachers on psychophysiological and epigenetic correlates of wellbeing, prosociality and stress”
Researchers: Marcela Matos, José Pinto-Gouveia, Marina Cunha, Margarida Pedroso de Lima, Ana Galhardo, Sérgio Carvalho, Inês Trindade, Isabel Albuquerque, Lara Palmeira, Helena Sá, Ana Raquel Santiago, Frederico Regateiro, Paulo Rodrigues dos Santos
Institutions: Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioral Intervention - CINEICC, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra (Portugal); Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2023/02 – 2026/01
Abstract
75/22 – “Static and dynamic cognitive control abilities and their relationship to hypnotic suggestibility”
Researcher: Benjamin Parris
Institution: Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/07 – 2025/07
Abstract
92/22 – “An integrative biopsychological model to explain associations between trauma history, paranormal experience and belief”
Researchers: Alexander Sumich, Nadja Heym, Stephanie McArdle
Institution: NTU - Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/07 – 2025/05
Abstract
98/22 – “Neural correlates of open-label placebo effects in emotional distress”
Researcher: Michael Schaefer
Institution: Medical School Berlin (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2023/09 – 2026/08
Abstract
101/22 – “I am where I believe my body is”
Researcher: Giorgia Tosi
Institution: Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/05 – 2024/04
Abstract
102/22 – “Identifying altered resting state connectivity dynamics as predictors of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH)”
Researchers: Sonja Kotz, Hanna Honcamp, Michael Schwartze, David Linden, Federico de Martino, Ana Pinheiro
Institution: Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University (The Netherlands)
Estimated duration: 2023/09 – 2025/08
Abstract
106/22 – “Gaze-centered decision making”
Researchers: Rubén Moreno Bote, Benjamin Hayden, Demetrio Ferro
Institutions: Center for Brain and Cognition, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain); Neuroscience Department, University of Minnesota (USA)
Estimated duration: 2023/02 – 2025/01
Abstract
132/22 – “Mapping the psychophysiology of commitment”
Researchers: John Michael, Martina Fanghella, Stephen Butterfill, Corrado Sinigaglia
Institutions: Cognition in Action Lab, Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2025/02
Abstract
135/22 – “Transformative power of monastic debate and analytical meditation on cognition, emotion and brain”
Researchers: Marieke van Vugt, Narayanan Srinivasan
Institutions: Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen (The Netherlands); Department of Cognitive Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India)
Estimated duration: 2023/04 – 2026/04
Abstract
149/22 – “After-death communication with cell phones”
Researcher: Imants Baruss
Institution: Department of Psychology, King's University College at Western University, London (Canada)
Estimated duration: 2023/05 – 2025/04
Abstract
174/22 – “Manipulating consciousness: The role of arousal and attention on conscious perception”
Researchers: Pietro Avanzini, Maria Del Vecchio, Enrico Salemi, Annalisa Cassisi, Alice Giorgi
Institution: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - CNR, Institute of Neuroscience, Parma (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2025/02
Abstract
179/22 – “Exploring aphantasia and exceptional experiences”
Researchers: Christine Simmonds-Moore, John Kruth
Institutions: Department of Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton (USA); Rhine Research Center, Durham (USA)
Estimated duration: 2023/08 – 2024/07
Abstract
213/22 – “RegularMente - Randomized controlled trial of the effects of a guided imagery based Intervention on the well-being, socioemotional and cognitive development, physiologic activity, and academic success of children in school”
Researchers: Iolanda Galinha, Joana Carvalho, Margarida Matos, Augusta Gaspar, António Palmeira, Gina Lemos, Joaquim Melro, Hélder Fernandes, Cátia Reis, Vitória Cardoso, Patrícia Arriaga, Hugo Plácido da Silva, Diego Pinal, Susana Martins
Institutions: Psychology Research Centre, Autonomous University of Lisbon (Portugal); Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon (Portugal); Lisbon School of Medicine (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2023/07 – 2026/05
Abstract
231/22 – “Understanding how humans perceive high-frequency vibrations”
Researchers: Nélson Costa, Isabel Lisboa, Emanuel Silva, Paulo Cardoso
Institution: Centro ALGORITMI, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Guimarães (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2026/02
Abstract
233/22 – “Assessing cardiac activity as a predictor of freezing behaviour in humans”
Researchers: Jaime Grácio, Natalia Barrios, Marta Moita, Diego Carrasco, Carolina Ferreira, Pedro Ferreira, Joaquim Alves da Silva, Albino Oliveira-Maia
Institution: Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon (Portugal)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2026/02
Abstract
241/22 – “From the body to visual awareness: Interoceptive influences on the processing of consciously and non-consciously perceived emotional visual stimuli”
Researchers: Ruben Azevedo, Marco Tamietto
Institutions: School of Psychology, University of Kent (UK); Department of Psychology, University of Turin (Italy)
Estimated duration: 2023/09 – 2025/06
Abstract
260/22 – “TrustyCobots: Human-like or machine-like? Tracking psychophysiological components of trust in human-robot collaboration”
Researchers: Artur Pilacinski, Sergi Bermudez I Badia, Ioannis Iossifidis, Ana Luisa Pinto, Paula Alexandra Silva, Christian Klaes
Institutions: Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioral Intervention - CINEICC, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra (Portugal); University of Madeira (Portugal); Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences (Germany)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2026/02
Abstract
265/22 – “Predicting the future to make sense of the present: Predictive brain mechanisms for speech perception”
Researcher: Ediz Sohoglu
Institution: School of Psychology, University of Sussex (UK)
Estimated duration: 2023/09 – 2024/08
Abstract
284/22 – “Slow wave sleep reduces emotion: A multilevel approach combining the monitoring of brain, neurovegetative and dream activities”
Researchers: Pascal Hot, Jean Baptiste Eichenlaub, Sophie Schwartz, Jessica Bourgin, Sonia Pellissier, Sylvain Delplanque
Institutions: Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, Université Savoie Mont Blanc (France); Sleep and Cognition Neuroimaging Laboratory, Geneva University NeuroCenter (Switzerland)
Estimated duration: 2023/03 – 2024/10
Abstract
300/22 – “Feeling good and feeling in control: A longitudinal study of mood and sense of agency”
Researchers: Alexandre Hyafil, María da Fonseca
Institution: Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra (Spain)
Estimated duration: 2023/06 – 2026/05
Abstract
318/22 – “Decoding of LSD-induced perceptual changes in visual and auditory modalities”
Researchers: Sidarta Ribeiro, Luiza Mugnol-Ugarte, Dráulio Araújo, Daniel Brandão, Stanislas Dehaene, Ghislaine Lambertz, Lucie Berkovitch, Fosca Al Loumi, Dayane Lima, Marina Reis, Fernanda Fontes, Sérgio Arthuro Rolim
Institutions: Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology - 2Bio, Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil); Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - UFJF (Brazil)
Estimated duration: 2023/05 – 2025/05
Abstract
The Symposia
In order to provide all the supported researchers with the opportunity of discussing and present their projects, the BIAL Foundation has been organizing, since 1996, the Symposia entitled “Behind and Beyond the Brain”.
Since then these Symposia are held every two years gathering the researchers supported by the BIAL Foundation and the scientific community of neuroscience and parapsychology areas.
“Placebo effects, Healing and Meditation”, “Mind-matter Interactions”, “Sleep and Dreams”, “Intuition and Decision-making”, “Memory”, “Exceptional Experiences”, “Emotions”, “Enhancing the Mind”, or the most recent “The Mystery of Time”, were some of the themes already debated in the Symposia “Behind and Beyond the Brain” by world-known speakers as: Miguel Castelo-Branco (Coimbra), Axel Cleeremans (Brussels), António Damásio (Los Angeles), Hoyt Edge (Florida), Peter Fenwick (London), Eberhard Fetz (Washington), Fernando Gil (Sorbonne), Allan Hobson (Harvard), Jerome Kagan (Harvard), Irving Kirsch (Boston), Stephen Kosslyn (San Francisco), Stephen Laberge (Stanford), Dietrich Lehmann (Zurich), Fernando Lopes da Silva (Amsterdam), Edwin May (Palo Alto), Robert Morris (Edinburgh), Dean Radin (Nevada), Alcino Silva (Los Angeles), Ian Stevenson (Virginia), and Robert Stickgold (Harvard).
As a result of the developed work the BIAL Foundation usually publishes the Proceedings of the Symposia. Check the published editions here.
Previous Editions
