Driving recovery in the post-stroke brain through volition: A case study in digital brain health
Dr. Paul F.M.J. Verschure, Professor of Neuroengineering, Donders Centre of Neuroscience, Radboud University
To Be Received
Short Bio
Biography
Dr. Paul F.M.J. Verschure (1962) is ICREA Research Professor and director of the Center of Autonomous Systems and Neurorobotics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra where he runs the Laboratory of Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems (SPECS). He received both his MA and PhD in Psychology and pursued his research at different leading institutes: the Neurosciences Institute and The Salk Institute, both in San Diego, the University of Amsterdam, University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-ETH and currently with ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Paul’s research group comprises a multidisciplinary team of 25 doctoral and post-doctoral researchers including psychologists, engineers and biologists. He is a consultant for the European Commission regarding the integration of Neuroinformatics in the 5th-6th & 7th FP and a referee for Science, Nature, Royal Society London, Trends in Neuroscience, IEEE neural networks, PLoS Computational Biology and PLoS ONE.
His scientific aim is to find a unified theory of mind, brain and body through the use of synthetic methods and to apply such a theory to the development of novel technologies and quality of life enhancing applications. Paul has organized SPECS along three dimensions: 1) computational models of neuronal mechanisms underlying perception, cognition, emotion and behavior, including: the cerebellum and motor learning, the hippocampus, ventral striatum and prefrontal cortex in decision making and the amygdala and cortex in emotional learning. 2) robotics and avatars as artificial bodies for neuronal models. 3) the application of the technologies developed in 2) combined with the theories from 1) to the enhancement of the quality of life.
