Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.
In philosophy and neuroscience, neuroethics is the study of both the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics. The ethics of neuroscience concerns the ethical, legal and social impact of neuroscience, including the ways in which neurotechnology can be used to predict or alter human behavior and "the implications of our mechanistic understanding of brain function for society... integrating neuroscientific knowledge with ethical and social thought".
Neuromarketing is a commercial marketing communication field that applies neuropsychology to market research, studying consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses to marketing stimuli. The potential benefits to marketers include more efficient and effective marketing campaigns and strategies, fewer product and campaign failures, and ultimately the manipulation of the real needs and wants of people to suit the needs and wants of marketing interests.
Neuroinformatics is the field that combines informatics and neuroscience. Neuroinformatics is related with neuroscience data and information processing by artificial neural networks. There are three main directions where neuroinformatics has to be applied:
The Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research initiative that aims to create a digital reconstruction of the mouse brain. The project was founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Its mission is to use biologically-detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mammalian brain to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function.
Philip E. Rubin is an American cognitive scientist, technologist, and science administrator known for raising the visibility of behavioral and cognitive science, neuroscience, and ethical issues related to science, technology, and medicine, at a national level. His research career is noted for his theoretical contributions and pioneering technological developments, starting in the 1970s, related to speech synthesis and speech production, including articulatory synthesis and sinewave synthesis, and their use in studying complex temporal events, particularly understanding the biological bases of speech and language.
Mohamed Aly El-Erian is an Egyptian-American economist and businessman. He is President of Queens' College, Cambridge, and chief economic adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he was CEO and co-chief investment officer (2007–14). He was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council (2012–17), and is a columnist for Bloomberg View, and a contributing editor to the Financial Times.
Michael T. Ullman is an American neuroscientist whose main field of research is the relationship between language, memory and the brain. He is best known for his Declarative/Procedural model of language.
Karl John Friston FRS FMedSci FRSB is a British neuroscientist and theoretician at University College London. He is an authority on brain imaging and theoretical neuroscience, especially the use of physics-inspired statistical methods to model neuroimaging data and other random dynamical systems. Friston is a key architect of the free energy principle and active inference. In imaging neuroscience he is best known for statistical parametric mapping and dynamic causal modelling. In October 2022, he joined VERSES Inc, a California-based cognitive computing company focusing on artificial intelligence designed using the principles of active inference, as Chief Scientist.
Bruno della Chiesa is a linguist of Italian, French and German descent, who describes himself as an "engaged cosmopolitan". He teaches at Harvard University and is considered one of the main founders of educational neuroscience, is known to have coined the terms "neuromyth" (2002) and "neuro-hijacking" (2013) and has established theories on the "motivational vortex" (2007) and on the “tesseracts in the brain” (2008). He also created the international science fiction festival Utopiales.
George A. Kohlrieser is an American-born clinical and organizational psychologist, author, speaker and consultant. He is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school based in Lausanne Switzerland and the author of the award-winning book Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others and Raise Performance (2006) and co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Performance through Secure Base Leadership (2012).He is also known for his use of the hostage metaphor in business and leadership development.
Matthew Dylan Lieberman is a Professor and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director at UCLA Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.
Theodore H. Schwartz is an American medical scientist, academic physician and neurosurgeon.
Neuromanagement uses cognitive neuroscience, among other life science fields, and technology to analyze economic and managerial issues. It focuses on exploring human brain activities and mental processes when people are faced with typical problems of economics and management. This research provides insight into human decision-making and other general social behavior. The main research areas include decision neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neuro-industrial engineering, and neuro-information systems. Neuromanagement was first proposed in 2006 by Professor Qingguo Ma, the director of Neuromanagement Laboratory of Zhejiang University.
Judith E. Glaser was an American author, academic, business executive, and organizational anthropologist. She was the founder and chief executive officer of Benchmark Communications, Inc., an executive coaching and management consulting company based in New York City and Boston. Glaser was also the co-founder and chairman of the Creating WE Institute. During her career, she worked with clients including Clairol, Citibank, Pfizer, Burberry, American Airlines, and Verizon.
Anil Kumar Seth is a British neuroscientist and professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. A proponent of materialist explanations of consciousness, he is currently amongst the most cited scholars on the topics of neuroscience and cognitive science globally.
Daphna Joel is an Israeli neuroscientist and advocate for "neurofeminism". She is best known for her research which claims that there is no such thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain". Joel's research has been criticized by other neuroscientists who argue that male and female brains, on average, show distinct differences and can be classified with a high level of accuracy. Joel is a member of The NeuroGenderings Network, an international group of researchers in gender studies and neuroscience. They are critical of what they call neurosexism in the scientific community. Joel has given lectures on her work in both scientific and lay conventions around the world.
Rafael Yuste is a Spanish-American neurobiologist and one of the initiators of the BRAIN Initiative announced in 2013. He is currently a professor at Columbia University.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
