Dr. Andrew Fingelkurts	e-mail:	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dr. Alexander Fingelkurts	e-mail:	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Ph.D. (in Psychophysiology) 1998.

 

Ph.D. dissertation projects

• Time-spatial organization of human EEG segment's structure (Andrew A. Fingelkurts)
• Some regularities of human EEG spectral patterns dynamics during cognitive activity (Alexander A. Fingelkurts).

 

Research activities

Our studies include crosscutting research programmes:

• Computational, theoretical and systems neuroscience (operational architectonics of brain and mind functioning)
• Cognition and consciousness (memory, multisensory perception, awareness, language, semantics)
• Self-awareness and meditation (Selfhood, self-regulation, agency, self-awnership)
• Clinical Neuroscience (brain injury, vegetative and minimally conscious states, schizophrenia, depression).

The most unresolved theoretical issue of greatest human significance that neuroscientists would hope to gain some understanding is consciousness (the entity that none can easily define, but nearly all accept that it exists), its neural constitutes, and its place and role in physical world. We believe that for an understanding human consciousness the description of the laws of the immediately underlying neural collective phenomena is required. Our studies are dedicated to this major objective.

The obtained experimental results are highly suggestive for the existence of a nested hierarchical organisation of phenomenal consciousness, whose dynamics has several statistical properties that are characteristic of self-organizing, fractal, scale-free, and self-similar systems (for a more detail see here). Although these results and conclusions follow the ideas put forward by physicists for a physical objects, there is still much theoretical work to be done in order to integrate them with a physical substratum – brain.

We propose that the brain operational architectonics (OA), centred around the notion of operation, is the promising theoretical framework that could bridge the gap between subjective and neurophysiological domains. Approaching the notion of operation as a process lasting in time, present in both brain and mind, and considering its combinatorial nature (increasing complexity), it seems especially well suited for understanding and studying the mechanisms of how a conscious mind emerges from the brain.

Based on our studies we have established an empirical basis for a general theory of brain OA, according to which the simplest mental/cognitive operations (responsible for qualia or simple computations) are presented in the brain in the form of local 3D fields produced by transient functional neuronal assemblies, while complex operations (responsible for complex objects, images or thoughts) are brought into existence by joint simple operations (temporal coupling of local 3D fields by means of operational synchrony) in the form of so-called operational modules (OM) of varied complexity. Therefore, brain OA is presented as a highly structured and dynamic extracellular electric field nested in spatial and temporal domains and over a range of frequencies, thus forming a particular operational space–time (OST) that is isomorphic to a phenomenal (subjective) space-time (PST).

The main purpose of our studies is to run a series of OA motivated, theoretically crucial experiments, to reveal the neural constituents of consciousness in unprecedented ways and to evaluate whether such findings are leading toward a neuroscientific explanation of consciousness.

The new knowledge obtained in such research program may potentially contribute to (a) optimization of education and learning processes; (b) development of applications in information technology and artificial intelligence; (c) development of better diagnostic tools and treatment strategies for cognitive and functional disorders such as, for example, mental disorders, vegetative and minimally conscious states.

 

Other interests and activities

We are also interested in Philosophy, Psychology, Theology, Human Sexuality, Semantics & Semiotics, and Art (see some of our paintings)