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Director Q&A
UC Santa Barbara is known as a place where subjects get studied from all angles and across the disciplines. Nothing fits this multi-dimensional approach better than the human mind, which has fascinated scientists, poets and philosophers from the dawn of human thought. The university will be taking its already ground-breaking research in this area to a new level this fall when it opens its Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. The Center will draw upon a wide range of scholarly endeavors and technologies in the humanities, social sciences and the sciences to study the relationship of the mind and brain.
Leading this exciting enterprise will be one of the world’s most distinguished researchers in the cognitive sciences, Michael Gazzaniga. Gazzaniga is currently the David T. McLaughlin Distinguished University Professor at Dartmouth College and director of the college’s Program in Cognitive Neuroscience. He is president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute and, in 1993, founded the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Neurological Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics since its inception in 2002. Gazzaniga is coming to UCSB early in 2006.
Gazzaniga has published many books, notably The Ethical Brain (his most recent), Mind Matters, and Nature’s Mind. His many scholarly publications include the landmark 1995 book for MIT Press, The Cognitive Neurosciences, now in its third edition, which is recognized as the sourcebook for the field.
Gazzaniga recently shared some thoughts with Convergence about the Sage Center, his research, the intersection of science and ethics, and the pleasure of returning to his native California:
Tell us about the Sage Center for Study of the Mind. What persuaded you to come back West to lead this new program?
I have had the pleasure of starting two major scientific centers and both were centered on studying the brain and its action. With the Sage Center the brain-science aspect plays a crucial role but the agenda is much larger. There are all kinds of academic disciplines interested in the nature of the human mind. Philosophers, economists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, humanists, computer scientists and much more all have dogs in this fight for understanding human mental processes. The Sage Center will strive to bring these forces together and to illuminate the problem in a multidimensional way.
On a personal note, I started as an assistant professor at UCSB some 40 years ago. It is a good feeling to come home and to work on establishing this new Center.
What will set the Sage Center apart from other institutions that study the workings of the mind and brain? How will its mission and work be distinctive? And how will the larger UC Santa Barbara intellectual community play a role?
Most centers don't have a canvas this large.
Aspects of the problem are studied at other places and the attempt
to integrate knowledge across relevant fields is not foremost.
It is hard work to do this and quite frankly many specialists
will be doubtful it can work. As a result it will be a subset
from each discipline who will come together to work on this project.
UCSB is known for this sort of risk taking and it has done well in doing so. I hope for the same here.
What research questions intrigue you the most right now?
For the past 35 years I have studied brain mechanisms associated with personal human consciousness and mostly in patients who had undergone separation of their cerebral hemispheres in an effort to control intractable epilepsy. The vast majority of those studies were behavioral in nature, and while they illuminated the nature of human cerebral specialization and important differences between the left and right brain, they did not tell us about how the underlying pathways functioned. With new brain imaging technologies, these pathways can now be studied in the most amazing way. Individual differences in how quickly we can solve cognitive problems can be traced to differences in the underlying organization of the nervous system.
At the same time, I have become captivated with another truth. Ask yourself the following question: How many of the thoughts that you have had in the last 48 hours would have any meaning if you were the only person on Earth? The answer is, not many. We are social animals to the core. We are always thinking about the other person, what their intentions towards us might be, how they feel and so on. I think a major goal of the new Center will be to understand the social aspects of the human condition.
How do you and your colleagues plan to address these questions at the new center?
Lots of brain imaging, lots of seminars where the goal will be to talk and think across classic disciplines. There will be all kinds of activities.
Given your long ties to UC Santa Barbara, what would you say has changed, and what has stayed largely the same, about the university since you first taught here nearly four decades ago?
When I first arrived at UCSB there were many great psychologists here at the time. It was a good place for psychology. Scientists like David Premack, Howard and Tracy Kendler, John Foley, Walter Gogel, and many, many more played huge roles in launching UCSB.
At the same time the field was limited and the human brain could not really be studied in any kind of major way. The past 10 years has seen an explosion of methods for getting at the nagging questions of the nature of the human mind. Big science is no longer limited to physics, chemistry and biology. Studying the mind needs a similar effort.
What would you consider the most significant discovery you have ever made?
Several years ago my student Joseph LeDoux and
I identified a capacity of the left brain called the "interpreter."
It is the process that seeks pattern and meaning in our actions,
thoughts and feelings. It is a big part of what makes humans unique.
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