Who reigns in the brain?

Public lectures

Prof. Dr. Wolf Singer, MPI for Brain Research, on March 10, 2008 (Brain Awareness Week)

In their self-awareness, people mostly define themselves as self-determined beings with their own free will. But to what extent does our awareness, our feelings and decisions depend on neuronal processes? In his lecture Prof Dr. Wolf Singer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and member of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), demonstrates that neurobiological evidence about the functioning of our brain contradicts our intuition. Following a description of the functional organization of the brain, he sets out to analyze the consequences of this neurobiological data for our self-understanding.