Georg Northoff
I am a philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist, holding degrees in all three disciplines. Being originally from Germany, I am now working in Ottawa/Canada where I research the relationship between the brain and mind in its various facets. The question driving me is: why and how can our brain construct subjective phenomena like self, consciousness, emotions.
For a personal account of my approach click here
Spatiotemporal neuroscience
For a summary of the spatiotmeporal approach of the brain-mind that I have been developing with my lab over the last years, refer to the talk below.
Many more of my recorded talks are available on my youtube channel
Here is a good podcast into our research
March 3, 2024
Watch my interview with Dr. Aldrich Chan on Space, Time, Self & Consciousness here.
February 27, 2024
Read our paper on why current AI does not exhibit fundamental subjectivity, and therefore nor consciousness here.
October 15, 2023
Read our clinically highly-relevant article on rTMS of motor cortex in major depression here.
August 13, 2023
Read a nice interpretation of our paper on the subjectivity of self and its ontology by Lieke Asma and Godehard Bruntrup here.
July 20, 2023
Check out our new paper on how altered brain dynamics index levels of arousal in complete locked-in syndrome in Communications Biology
July 5, 2023
Talk on Catatonia @ The Royal Ottawa
May 2023
I gave a talk the Akian College of Science & Egnineering, Armenia, on AI and consciousness
April 2023
My new book “Neurowaves” is now available here.
April 2023
In a new episode of the podcast “Talks on Psychoanalysis”, I discuss the self and its continuity and why time matters
October 2022
In our recent paper, we highlight topographic reorganization of the balance of default mode network and central executive nework in experience meditators. Read the article published in Neuroscience of Consciounsness here.
September 02, 2022
Check out our new paper on the nested hierarchy of self and its trauma published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 03, 2022
Watch an interview about the newest book The Dynamic Self in Psychoanalysis: Neuroscientific Foundations and Clinical Cases
with Rosa Spagnolo.
May 27,2022
Read our new paper on “Ongoing Brain Activity and Its Role in Cognition: Dual versus Baseline Models” here
May 19, 2022
Check out our new paper on slow and powerless thought dynamics and how they relate to brooding in unipolar and bipolar depression here
May 17, 2022
We are happy to announce a special issue on "Temporo-Spatial Theory of Consciousness (TTC)" in the Journal “Entropy”.
Call for papers is now open. For submissions, please follow this link or visit the researchgate page of the special issue.
Check out our new paper on spatiotemporal mechanisms in psychoanalysis here
Trailer for the new book “The dynamic Self in Psychoanalysis” by Rosa Spagnolo and Georg Northoff
Buy the book here
Overview of the temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC) and its mechanisms
Dr. Northoff gave an overview over his spatiotemporal approach in Moscow
Dr. Northoff presents a summary of his “Temporospatial Theory of Consciziousness (TTC)”
Dr. Georg Northoff has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), the senior collegium of distinguished scholars, artists and scientists in the country. Read more here
It is a great honour to be placed in the top 0.1% of scholars writing about the Cerebral Cortex over the past 10 years, a level that is labelled as "Expert” by Expertscape
Can artificial intelligence help in the therapy of the locked in syndrome?
Our paper on the lost hierarchy of the autistic self made the cover of Brain Sciences.
Read the paper here
The Lost Neural Hierarchy of the the Autistic Self
Participants suffering from autism show self-paradoxical symptoms. On one hand, they are isolated from others and focus only on themselves especially on body and its physical self. On the other hand, they rarely refer to themselves in the first-person, they display weak autobiographical memory, and they are unaware of their own emotional feelings – their mental self is weakened. What is the neural basis of such paradoxical symptoms? This review highlights the consistent hypofunction in anterior and posterior regions of the default-mode network (DMN) in both rest and task with decreased self-non-self differentiation – this relates to the weakened mental self. While, at the same time, the non-DMN and subcortical regions are relatively stronger increasing subjects’ focus on their physical self. We conclude that the nested neural hierarchy of physical and mental self is disrupted in autism which leads us to postulate a new model, the lost “Hierarchy of the Autistic Self” (HAS).
What is Neurophilosophy? Why do we need it? Georg Northoff introduces non-reductive neurophilosophy
Philosophy and the brain – do they really go together? Neuroscientist may say that “I do not need philosophy, that is just pure speculation, I do empirical work”. While the philosopher may say: “I am working in the realm of logic and concepts, not in the realm of empirical data”. Hearing that one may think that philosophy and neuroscience have nothing in common. That is the conventional view.
Since neuroscience explored the inner workings of brain and mind, some people thought that we can eliminate or at least reduce philosophy to the brain and hence neuroscience. Since all our concepts, as discussed in philosophy, are traced to the brain, neuroscience can replace philosophy or, at last, the latter can be reduced to the former. This led to what Georg Northoff describes as “reductive neurophilosophy”.
He claims that we need to go beyond that, establishing non-reductive neurophilosophy. Despite dealing with empirical data, neuroscience nevertheless relies on concepts and their meanings to describe and interpret those data. For that, it may rely either implicitly or explicitly on particular models and definition of concepts. That is where philosophy comes in. Exploring the neural mechanisms of mental features like self or consciousness brings in invariably conceptual issues like the definition and model of self one presupposes when setting up the experimental design and analysing the empirical data. Taken such perspective, neuroscience always, although somewhat hidden, presupposes philosophy.
Non-reductive neurophilosophy explores and explicates these hidden presuppositions, the models and concepts and how they impact our paradigms and data analyses. Georg Northoff is one of the leading founders and originators of such non-reductive neurophilosophy which he applies to both neuroscientific and philosophical issues and topics. That is even more relevant given that he himself is not just a philosopher but also a neuroscientist who works empirically on brain imaging data to understand the neural mechanisms of self, consciousness, mind-wandering and other mental features.
How does he see the role of neurophilosophy? This can be read in a recent longer interview he gave for a Philosophy Journal in China. Read the entire interview about non-reductive neurophilosophy here in English or Chinese!
Neuroscience & Computational Intelligence
Consciousness and AI
Temporo-spatial consciousness. Looking for a common denominator between lived experience and neural dynamics
Neuroscientific and Neurophilosophical Comment on the Coronavirus Crisis
The current international crisis situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is having a strong psychological impact on our subjectivities. We are constantly threatened by the danger of i) being infected, ii) infecting other people, and (iii) by the loss of social relation. Departing from these premises, we here aim to investigate the psychological and neurodynamics of this complex phenomenon.
Read more
Linking bodily, environmental and mental states in the self—A three-level model based on a meta-analysis
Current researchers mostly agree that the self consists of both bodily and non-bodily environmental information. The neural mechanism underlying the integration of this information remains unclear. In this study, we propose a neural model subdividing self-processing into three intimately connected levels with different extension: Interoceptive-processing, Exteroceptive-processing and Mental-self-processing. We applied ALE meta-analyses on neuroimaging studies to analyze their neural patterns. Our results show common involvement of insula across all three levels including differentiation of self and familiarity. Common activities in Exteroceptive- and Mentalself-processing were found in the anteromedial prefrontal cortex (AMPFC) and the temporal parietal junction (TPJ), suggesting that the two regions likely serve basic functions in differentiation and integration of self-other information. Finally, Mental-self-processing involves extensive regions such as the cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, in addition to the insula, AMPFC and TPJ, which could specialize in adding self-relatedness to environment information. We conclude that there is a gradient organization in self-processing, through which body-environment information is integrated for the self via propagation from Interoceptive-processing to Mental-self-processing.
Using artificial intelligence to gain a better understanding of our brains
Dr. Georg Northoff of The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research and the University of Ottawa is part of a team that has received a grant from the Canada-United Kingdom Artificial Intelligence Initiative to study the brain and how it interacts with the external environment.
The research represents a new approach to understanding the brain, and its aim is to eventually build better diagnostic tools for mental health professionals to provide more personalised treatment for psychiatric disorders. The announcement was made by Navdeep Bains, Canada's minister of innovation, science and industry, and Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque, the British High Commissioner to Canada. It’s the first time three Canadian research funding agencies and four UK research councils have come together with the aim of strengthening research into artificial intelligence. Then international teams were awarded grants worth $5 million and £5 million over three years … Read more