Founding director Center for Neuroprosthetics, Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL — CH

Olaf Blanke is founding director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics and holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). He directs the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at EPFL and is Professor of Neurology at the University Hospital of Geneva. Blanke’s neuroscience research is dedicated to the study of consciousness and how bodily processing of the brain encodes the self, including such fascinating alterations of the self as out-of-body experiences and ghost sensations. His work includes pioneering technology research in virtual reality and robotics that is dedicated to the control and enabling of complex subjective mental states (i.e. experience engineering). In his medical research Blanke develops devices and procedures for diagnostics and therapeutics in several neurological conditions, including amputation, chronic pain, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease. Blanke has a long-standing interest in the Arts and Neuroscience and recently published Lignes de fuite. Vers une neuropsychologie de la peinture. He has published several articles about self-portraiture and has collaborated with the visual artists Melvin Monti, Luca Forcucci, Nicole Ottiger, Isabella Pasqualini, and Mark Boulos.

http://lnco.epfl.ch/olaf.blanke