Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Lecture Series

2001 Lectures

Images of the Mind

• October 11, 2001: Minds, Brains and Computers
• October 25, 2001: What Art Tells Us About the Brain
• November 1, 2001: Brain Disorders: New Hope at the New Millennium

Imagine the ultimate conundrum of human discovery: the brain trying to understand its own workings.

"Images of the Mind," the 2001 series of the Dorothy j. Killam Memorial Lectures, will assess progress in research on the brain from three current perspectives. Addressing one each of these three, world-renowned experts from Oxford, Harvard and Columbia Universities will deliver free public lectures at the Dalhousie Arts Centre.

Neuroscience – research on the brain and nervous system – is a large, rapidly progressing area of biomedical research by which we have come to understand the mechanisms of the brain, the theme of the first Lecture. Neuroscience draws together modern approaches in the life sciences, such as cell and molecular biology, and harnesses these to physical methods, such as modern brain imaging and computational studies.

Our perception of the world through the senses, especially through our sense of vision, provides some of our most vivid subjective experiences. These have been captured over the centuries by artists, whose work thus mirrors our perception of the world, the theme of the second Lecture.

Neurological diseases, and the mental disorders which are their frequent outcome are the largest cause of hospitalization in the Western world. These difficulties of human existence now show signs of yielding to increased research in the basic biology of the brain. This softening of problems previously thought intractable is creating a genuine sense of progress, the theme of the third Lecture, giving hope that the future will witness answers to some of our most urgent clinical problems.

Minds, Brains and Computers   

Date: October 11, 2001
Speaker: Dr. Colin Blakemore

Dr. Colin Blakemore is the Waynflete Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford, where he is also Director of the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. His research has been concerned with many aspects of vision and the early development of the brain. In particular, he has studied the mechanisms of stereoscopic vision, visual illusions and the perception of shape, contrast, size and form. He is best known for his work on the influence of visual experience on the brain during a "sensitive period" after birth, on the causes of the common forms of childhood blindness and on the prenatal development of the brain. He is described as one of Britain's most influential communicators of science. His books include "Mechanics of the Mind," "Images and Understanding," "Mindwaves," "The Mind Machine," and "Gender and Society."

What Art Tells Us About the Brain   

Date: October 25, 2001
Speaker: Dr. Patrick Cavanagh

Dr. Patrick Cavanagh is currently Professor of Psychology and a member of the Vision Sciences Laboratory, at Harvard University. Born in Ontario, Dr. Cavanagh studied electrical engineering at McGill and earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University. Before moving to Harvard in 1989, he taught Psychology at the Université de Montréal. He was the 1992 Helmholtz Lecturer (lrvine); the 1996 Hebb Lecturer (McGill) and the 1998 Attneave Lecturer (Oregon). Dr. Cavanagh examines how attributes in the visual scene such as colour, movement, depth, etc. contribute to our experience of visual form. He also examines the brain's internal codes for these attributes, how these are stored, their underlying neurophysiology, and how such codes help construct the brain's models of the three-dimensional world. He explores how artists cleverly exploit such cues to render the world realistically on a two-dimensional canvas.

Brain Disorders: New Hope at the New Millennium   

Date: November 1, 2001
Speaker: Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach

Dr. Gerald Fischbach is currently the Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences at Columbia University. He recently served as Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. From 1990 to 1998, he was the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology and Chairman of the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Throughout his career, Dr. Fischbach has studied the formation and maintenance of synapses, the junctions between nerve cells and their targets, through which information is transmitted in the brain. A research pioneer, Dr. Fischbach provides distinguished leadership for medical and scientific advisory boards and also for many professional associations.