Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship: An International Symposium

São Paulo, Brazil

Informations about international inscriptions will be available soon!

The symposium’s main objective will be to discuss the relationship between the mind and the brain through both the scientific and the philosophical perspectives. The implications of relevant topics about the mind-brain problem, usually neglected in academic debates, will be discussed.

We are certain that this event will be an excellent opportunity for a high-level debate of controversial and challenging topics in the quest for understanding the human mind. Several leading international researchers in the field are already confirmed as speakers.

You can come to Sao Paulo physically, or watch live, on-line, from your computer.Rest assured, every presentation will be available both in Portuguese and in English. See below for more information.

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1-Science and Mind: Empirical and Philosophical Analysis of Cartesianism and of the reductionist materialism
Robert Almeder, PhD (USA)
2 - Materialism’s eternal return: recurrent patterns of materialistic explanations of the mental phenomena
Saulo de Freitas Araujo, PhD (Brazil)
3 - No-collapse Physics, Mechanism and Spirituality
Chris J. S. Clarke, PhD (England)
4 - The Brain, the Mind and Transcendent Experiences
Mario Beauregard, PhD (Canada)
5 - Cases of Reincarnation Type and Mind-Brain Relationship
Erlendur Haraldsson, PhD (Iceland)
6 - Research on Mediumistic Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD (Brazil)
7 – Near-Death Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Peter Fenwick, MD, PhD (England)
8 - Quantum brain processes provide plausible scientific explanations for consciousness and soul
Stuart Hameroff MD, PhD (USA)

Discoveries in neuro-science and neuro-technology, in particular, have provided a unique window through which we can glance into the intricate workings of the human brain. Technologies such as brain scanning using positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have enabled us to monitor and understand brain areas related to emotions, feelings and thoughts.
Even though these technologies have evolved, they have also shown the fundamental limitations that currently exist in our understanding of the human mind. Chiefly, what is the nature of the relationship between the brain and the mind? What is it that makes us human and provides us with the qualities and skills that distinguish us from other beings?
The symposium’s main objective will be to discuss the relationship between the mind and the brain through both the scientific and the philosophical perspectives. The implications of relevant topics about the mind-brain problem, usually neglected in academic debates, will be discussed.
We are certain that this event will be an excellent opportunity for a high-level debate of controversial and challenging topics in the quest for understanding the human mind. Several leading international researchers in the field are already confirmed as speakers.

"Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship" is the result of a collaboration between the "Department of Clinical Emergencies of the University of São Paulo School of Medicine" (FM-USP) and the "Research Center in Spirituality and Health of the Federal University of Juiz de For a" (UFJF) School of Medicine, and the support of several other institutions. The themes of the lectures will appear in a special supplement of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published by the FM-USP’s Department and Institute of Psychiatry.

September 24th - Friday

5:30 pm - 7:00 pm - Registration

7:00 pm - 7:30 pm - Opening Remarks

7:30 pm – 8:30 pm- Opening-Lecture:
Science and Mind: Empirical and Philosophical Analysis of Cartesianism and of reductionist materialism
Robert Almeder, PhD (USA)
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University.

8:30 pm – 9 pm - Discussion

September 25th -Saturday

7.30 am - 9 am - Registration

9 am - 10am Lecture
Materialism’s eternal return: recurrent patterns of materialistic
explanations of mental phenomena
Saulo de Freitas Araujo, PhD (Brazil)
Professor of Philosophy, Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF).

10 am to 10:30am - Discussion

10.30 am to 11 am - Coffee Break - Release of the books “A arte de curar”-Saúde, Espiritualidade e Educação (The Art of Healing-Health, Spirituality and Education) and The project of a Scientific Psychology in Wilhelm Wundt: A New Interpretation

11 am - 12 pm – Lecture
The Brain, the Mind and Transcendent Experiences
Mario Beauregard, PhD (Canada)
Associate Research Professor, University of Montreal (Departments of Psychology and Radiology, Neuroscience Research Center).
12 pm to 12:30 pm - Discussion

12.30 pm-1 pm- Panel Discussion

1 pm to 2:30 pm- Lunch Break

2:30 pm to 3:30 pm- Lecture
No-collapse Physics, Mechanism and Spirituality
Chris J. S. Clarke, PhD (England)
Visiting professor and former director of the mathematics’ faculty of the University of Southampton (UK)

3:30 pm to 4:00- discussion

4 pm to 4:30- Coffee Break

4:30 pm to 5:30 pm – Lecture
Quantum brain processes provide plausible scientific explanations for consciousness and soul
Stuart Hameroff MD, PhD
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology
Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

5:30 pm to 6:00 pm- Discussion

6:00 pm to 6:30 pm – Panel Discussion

September 26th -Sunday

8:30 am to 9:30 am- Lecture
Near-Death Experiences and the Mind-Brain Discussion
Peter Fenwick, MD (England)
Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry (London), Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

9:30 am to 10:00am - Discussion

10:00 am to 10:30 am- Coffee Break

10:30 am to 11:30 am- Lecture
Cases of Reincarnation Type and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Erlendur Haraldsson, PhD (Iceland)
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Iceland.

11:30 am to 12:00am - Discussion

12:00 am to 1:00 pm- Lecture
Research on Mediumistic Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD (Brazil)
Professor of Psychiatry, Federal University of Juiz de Fora - UFJF

1:00pm to 1:30 pm - Discussion

1:30 pm -2:00 pm- Panel Discussion

2:00 to 2:30 pm- Closing Session

1-Science and Mind: Empirical and Philosophical Analysis of Cartesianism and of the reductionist materialism
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University. Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, and Post doctorate, Stanford University. Author of more than 80 articles published in academic journals and dozens of books. He was the editor o the American Philosophical Quarterly from 1998-2003, published " Death and Personal Survival:The Evidence for life After Death" ( Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). His most recent pubication is "Truth and Skepticism" ( Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

2 - Materialism’s eternal return: recurrent patterns of materialistic explanations of the mental phenomena
Professor of the Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). Graduation in Psychology (UFJF), Masters in Philosophy (University of São Carlos - UFSCar) and Ph.D in Philosophy (Unicamp / Universität Leipzig). Research interest in the History and Philosophy of Psychology, with emphasis on the project of a scientific psychology and the mind-brain problem in philosophy and psychology.

3 No-collapse Physics, Mechanism and Spirituality
Chris Clarke has been Professor of Applied Mathematics and Dean of the Mathematics Faculty, University of Southampton, UK.
His research was originally in the areas of General Relativity and cosmology, including quantum cosmology, with a few years spent on the physics of the human brain. In 1999 he moved to an honorary position in order to focus on interdisciplinary writing. Received over 600 citations in scientific papers registered in Web of Science. Recently published the books Ways of Knowing (Academic Press) and Weaving the Cosmos (O-books).

4-The Brain, the Mind and Transcendent Experiences
Associate Research Professor, Departments of Radiology and Psychology, University of Montreal
Author of more than 100 publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. He was selected by the World Media Net (2000) to be among "The one hundred pioneers of the 21st century." His groundbreaking work on the neurobiology of emotion regulation and transcendent experiences has received international media coverage.
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/beauregm/index_en.htm

5- Cases of Reincarnation Type and Mind-Brain Relationship
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Iceland He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and did further studies at the University of Virginia (USA). He has been visiting professor in Freiburg and at the University of Virginia.
Professor Haraldsson has published over 200 papers, on a broad range of issues, from standardization of psychological tests, to interrogative suggestibility, conducted national surveys of anomalistic and religious experiences, and done a major study of hallucinatory/visionary experiences in terminal patients. He has studied some one hundred cases of children who claim to remember episodes form a past life, and conducted psychological studies of them. Professor Haraldsson is the author of five books; two have appeared in many languages; “At the hour of death” and “Miracles are my visiting cards”.
www.hi.is/~erlendur/english

6-Research on Mediumistic Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Dr. Moreira-Almeida was trained in psychiatry and cognitive-behavioral therapy at Institute of Psychiatry of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, where he also obtained his PhD in Health Sciences investigating the mental health of Spiritist mediums. Formerly a postdoctoral fellow in religion and health at Duke University (US), he is now Professor of Psychiatry at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora School of Medicine and Founder and Director of the Research Center in Spirituality and Health, Brazil (www.ufjf.br/nupes-eng). His main research interest involves empirical studies of spiritual experiences as well as the methodology and epistemology of this research field. His publications are available at www.hoje.org.br/elsh

7 – Near-Death Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Dr Peter Fenwick is Consultant Neuropsychiatrist emeritus to the Epilepsy Unit at the Maudsley Hospital which he ran for 20 years. His current appointments include: Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Emeritus Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford and Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist at Broadmoor Hospital. He is President of the Scientific and Medical Network. He has had a longstanding interest in brain function, the relationship of the mind and the brain, and the problem of consciousness. He has an extensive research record and has published over 200 papers in medical and scientific journals on brain function and also several papers on meditation and altered states of consciousness. He is widely regarded as the main clinical authority in the UK on the subject of 'Near Death Experiences' and is highly regarded by both medical colleagues and the media for his knowledge of this subject.

8 - Quantum brain processes provide plausible scientific explanations for consciousness and soul
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology
Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
With British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, Hameroff developed the controversial Penrose-Hameroff "Orch OR" theory based on quantum computing in brain neuronal microtubules, connecting consciousness to the fundamental level of spacetime geometry. His research website is www.quantumconsciousness.org

1- Science and Mind: empirical and philosophical analysis of Cartesianism and of reductionist materialism Robert Almeder, PhD (USA)
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University.
He will make an empirical and philosophical analysis of Cartesianism and reductionist materialism. It questions the promises of cognitive science and reductive materialism to provide adequate explanations of human behavior.

2- Materialism’s eternal return: recurrent patterns of materialistic explanations of mental phenomena
Saulo de Freitas Araujo, PhD (Brazil)
Professor of Philosophy, Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF).

Since the new developments of neuro-technologies for studying the brain functioning in the second half of twentieth century, a new wave of enthusiasm for materialistic explanations of mental phenomena has invaded philosophy and psychology departments worldwide. The culmination of all this was the so-called “decade of brain” in the 1990s. However, a closer examination of the arguments presented by these new materialists reveals recurrent patterns of analogies and metaphors, besides an old rhetorical strategy of appealing to a distant future, in which all the problems will be solved. This paper intends to show that these new forms of materialism repeat arguments of the old-fashioned “vulgar materialism” of the nineteenth century. Finally, an interpretation for materialism’s eternal return will be offered.

3- No-collapse Physics, Mechanism and Spirituality
Chris J. S. Clarke, PhD (England)
Visiting professor and former director of the mathematics’ faculty of the University of Southampton (UK)

The mechanistic scientific paradigm is based on ideas that have hardly changed over the last 80 years. On this dominant view, the universe, including humans as inconsequential parts of it, is a somewhat wobbly machine. Its gears turn almost predictably from one moment to the next, disturbed only marginally by moments of random “quantum collapse” supposedly fully explained by Niels Bohr in 1927. Any phenomena not fitting this picture are either explained away, or attributed to a Cartesian “ghost in the machine” whose actions are almost equally mechanistic and whose relationship with matter is inscrutable.
Today, however, we can glimpse a more coherent view. Quantum cosmology in conjunction with the decoherence theory of Giulini, Zeh et al. have dismantled Bohr’s notion of collapse and focused attention on how the nature of human knowing influences the way in which the universe appears to us. Conversely, the ideas of Heidegger have influenced recent development in quantum (topos) logic. A more sophisticated view of the nature of human experiencing is being drawn from spiritual traditions and spiritual experience. These all point to a more radical investigation of the issues in which rigorous logic is coupled with a greater opening to our inner space.

4- The Brain, the Mind and Transcendent Experiences
Mario Beauregard, PhD (Canada)
Associate Research Professor, University of Montreal (Departments of Psychology and Radiology, Neuroscience Research Center).

In my presentation, I will review data suggesting a role for the temporal lobe in transcendent experiences (TEs). The possibility of experimentally inducing such experiences by stimulating the temporal lobe with weak electromagnetic currents will be considered. I will also examine the results of neuroimaging studies of TEs conducted to date, and discuss these results with respect to the mind-brain problem.

5- Cases of Reincarnation Type and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Erlendur Haraldsson, PhD (Iceland)
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Iceland.

The lecture will focus on cases of reincarnation type and their implications to the understanding of mind-body problem. I will present a detailed account of some cases that I have studied, and describe our attempts to verify / falsify the statements made by the children. I will give an overview of the interesting general characteristics of the cases that have gradually emerged as more cases have been studied in more countries and cultures. And finally, consider the implications of these findings for the mind-body problem.

6- Research on Mediumistic Experiences and the Mind-Brain Relationship
Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD (Brazil)
Professor of Psychiatry, Federal University of Juiz de Fora - UFJF

Mediumship, a spiritual experience widespread throughout human history, can be defined as an experience in which an individual (the medium) purports to be in communication with, or under the control of, the personality of a deceased person or other nonmaterial being. Research into this phenomenon was seminal to our understanding of the mind, particularly unconscious and dissociative mental activities. Since the XIX Century there is a substantial, but neglected tradition of scientific research about mediumship and its implications to the nature of mind. Applying contemporary research methods to mediumistic experiences may provide a badly needed broadening and diversification of the empirical base needed to advance our understanding of the mind-body problem. It will be discussed the best studies performed in this topic, the explanatory hypothesis raised and their implications for the mind-brain problem.

7- Near-Death Experiences and the Mind-Brain Discussion
Peter Fenwick, MD (England)
Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry (London), Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

It will be presented and discussed the main findings of scientific studies on near-death experiences, as well as other end of life experiences. The main theories raised to explain these experiences will be discussed as well as their implications for the mind-brain problem.

8- Quantum brain processes provide plausible scientific explanations for consciousness and soul
Stuart Hameroff, MD (USA)

Most views of how the brain produces the conscious mind consider only computation among brain neurons. However the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR theory proposes that consciousness depends on smaller, faster quantum computations in microtubules inside neurons, connecting consciousness to the most basic level of the universe – fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale. Penrose had also proposed that consciousness was guided by Platonic information in Planck scale geometry. As a process in the fabric of the universe, quantum consciousness provides a plausible scientific explanation for spirituality - inter-connectedness through entanglement, accessible cosmic wisdom embedded in Planck scale geometry, and potential afterlife and reincarnation.

The event will provide simultaneous translation services, from English to Portuguese and from Portuguese to English, in all of the lectures and discussions.

The symposium is directed to students and professionals, preferably from the health and humanities fields of study, but it is also open to students and professionals from any other area of interest.

There are no restrictions or prerequisites.

ON-SITE
Limit of registrations: 600

ON-LINE
Limit of registrations: 600

Registration Fees

ON-SITE OR ON-LINE

$ 200,00 on-site

Methods of Payment

Cash, Bank transfer or Credit card

* On Credit cards, up to 12 installments!



If you have not registered yet, click here to place the order.


As places are limited it may be that we terminate the registration before the deadline.

September 24 - 26, 2010

Centro de Convenções Rebouças
Avenida Rebouças, 600
São Paulo - SP, 05402-000
Brazil
(0xx)11 3898-7850


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Certificates will be handed out on the last day of the event (09/26/2010) at the Rebouças Convention Center, Sao Paulo - SP. For the students who registered on-line, the certificate will be sent to the address processed at www.saudeeducacao.com.br.

RWTurismo

On September 25th, 2010, at 10:30 pm, the book A Arte de Curar-Saúde, Espiritualidade e Educação (The art of healing – health, spirituality and education) will be the launched .

Journalists, magazines, newspapers, TV stations and other media interested in accreditation for the event, please contact DCC communication.

Phone Numbers for Contact:
55 11 3791-3000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              55 11 3791-3000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              55 11 3791-3000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
55 11 5533-4967 (Fax)

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