A gamma wave or gamma rhythm is a pattern of neural oscillation in humans with a frequency between 25 and 140 Hz, the 40 Hz point being of particular interest. Gamma rhythms are correlated with large scale brain network activity and cognitive phenomena such as working memory, attention, and perceptual grouping, and can be increased in amplitude via meditation or neurostimulation. Altered gamma activity has been observed in many mood and cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. Elevated gamma activity has also been observed in moments preceding death.
Matthieu Ricard is a French writer, photographer, translator and Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.
The Max Planck Institute for Brain Research is located in Frankfurt, Germany. It was founded as Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin 1914, moved to Frankfurt-Niederrad in 1962 and more recently in a new building in Frankfurt-Riedberg. It is one of 83 institutes in the Max Planck Society.
Ernst Pöppel is a German psychologist and neuroscientist. He is the father of Dr. David Poeppel.
Nikos K. Logothetis is a Greek biologist and neuroscientist. Logothetis studies visual perception and object recognition; he is well-known for his work demonstrating that BOLD fMRI data is related to neuronal activity. Logothetis directed the department of Physiology of Cognitive Processes at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen from 1996 to 2020. He will co-direct the International Center for Primate Brain Research in Shanghai beginning in late 2020 or early 2021.
Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt was a German physiologist and neurologist. He was the son of Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and the younger brother of Werner Creutzfeldt, a professor of internal medicine.
Theo Geisel is a German physicist. Geisel is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen. His research is primarily concerned with the behavior of complex systems ranging from theoretical investigations in quantum chaos to nonlinear phenomena occurring in the brain.
Robert Desimone is an American neuroscientist who currently serves as the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Frank W. Stahnisch is a historian of medicine and neuroscience at the University of Calgary in Canada, where he holds the endowed Alberta Medical Foundation/Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care. He is jointly appointed in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, and the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, and is a member of the Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the O'Brien Institute for Public Health. He has also received an adjunct professorship in the Department of Classics and Religion of the Faculty of Arts. His research interests in the history and philosophy of the biomedical sciences cover: the development of modern physiology and experimental medicine, the history of neuroscience and the history of psychiatry, as well as the development of modern medical visualization practices. Since 2015, he has succeeded Professor Malcolm Macmillan as an Editor-in-Chief of the international "Journal of the History of the Neurosciences", and since 2021 he is also an Associate Editor for the History and Philosophy of the Behavioural Neurosciences with "Frontiers in Psychology"
Angela Friederici is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and is an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychology and linguistics. She is the author of over 400 academic articles and book chapters, and has edited 15 books on linguistics, neuroscience, language and psychology.
Tania Singer is a German psychologist and social neuroscientist and the scientific director of the Max Planck Society's Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin, Germany. Between 2007 and 2010, she became the inaugural chair of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich and was the co-director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research in Zurich. Her research focuses on the developmental, neuronal, and hormonal mechanisms underlying human social behavior and social emotions such as compassion and empathy. She is founder and principal investigator of the ReSource project, one of the largest longitudinal studies on the effects of mental training on brain plasticity as well as mental and physical health, co-funded by the European Research Council. She also collaborates with the macro-economist Dennis Snower on research on caring economics. Singer's Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama was published in 2015. She is the daughter of the neuroscientist Wolf Singer.
Arno Villringer is a Director at the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center; and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain Institute, Berlin. He holds a full professorship at University of Leipzig and an honorary professorship at Charité, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.
The Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society (ESI) is an independent research institute financed by Andreas' and Thomas Strüngmann, German entrepreneurs, and named after their father Dr. Ernst Strüngmann. The ESI is under the scientific governance of the Max Planck Society. It is located in Frankfurt am Main in Hesse. ESI-directors are Scientific Members of the Max Planck Society. ESI’s mission is to perform excellent fundamental brain research. ESI research focuses on understanding how the many parts of the brain work together to bring about our behaviour.
Pascal Fries is a German neurophysiologist.
Robert H. Wurtz is an American neuroscientist working as a NIH Distinguished Scientist and Chief of the Section on Visuomotor Integration at the National Eye Institute. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is recognised for developing methods for studying the visual system in 'awake-behaving' primates, a technique now widely used for the study of higher brain functions. He pioneered the study of the neuronal basis of vision and its relation with cognitive functions.
David Poeppel is Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU). From 2014 until the end of 2021, he was the Director of the Department of Neuroscience at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA). In 2019, he co-founded the Center for Language, Music and Emotion (CLaME) an international joint research center, co-sponsored by the Max Planck Society and New York University. Since 2021, he is the Managing Director of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute.
Henning Scheich is a German brain researcher and psychiatrist. He was director of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology until 2010 and head of the institute department until 2013. Since 2014 he serves as the chairman of an emeritus group at the institute. He has made substantial contributions to the field of brain research, in particular on the mechanisms of perception, behaviour and their adaptability. Within the framework of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association he has exerted a lasting influence on the German community of researchers.
Andreas Karl Engel is a German neuroscientist. He is the director of the Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).
Hans Thoenen was a Swiss neurobiologist best known for his work on neurotrophins.
Ruxandra Sireteanu, also known after her marriage as Ruxandra Sireteanu-Constantinescu, was a Romanian biophysicist and neuroscientist who undertook pioneering research into the human visual system. Born in Romania, she initially studied at the University of Bucharest. She then undertook research in Pisa in Italy and Lausanne in Switzerland before moving to Germany, first joining the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich to work with Wolf Singer, and then the University of Ulm. In 1978, she moved to Frankfurt, initially to join the local Max Planck Institute for Brain Research before inaugurating the chair in Biological Psychology at Goethe University, which she held from 1999. She also held visiting positions at universities in the United States, including the University of California, Berkeley. Her research centred on the way that the visual system developed in people from their birth into adulthood, for which she studied both healthy individuals and, particularly, those with disorders like amblyopia.
