2011 Tom Slick Research Awards in Consciousness
The Science Advisory Committee recently convened to award the 2011 Tom Slick Research Awards in Consciousness. The annual award celebrates our longtime commitment to funding research that will lead to significant advancements in the science of consciousness and improvements in the health and well-being of humankind. We were delighted to fund researchers from Harvard Medical School, Oxford University, Brunel University, Yale University School of Medicine, and Baylor College of Medicine, with projects examining topics including: How does the ancient part of the brain underlying the sense of smell create conscious awareness? and What brain structures are activated when we become aware that we are dreaming?
Subjective experience and offline cognitive processing
Robert Stickgold, Ph.D.
Erin Wamsley, Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School
How might dreaming and thinking about problems of the day during sleep prepare the brain to solve problems the next day?
Modulation of a possible neural correlate of consciousness
Susan Greenfield, Ph.D.
Antoine-Scott Patrick Badin
Oxford University
How do brain structures modulate patterns of neural activity to trigger the crossing of the threshold from unconsciousness to conscious awareness?
Conscious and unconscious olfactory processing in the human brain
Noam Sagiv, Ph.D.
Adrian L. Williams, Ph.D.
Sean Williams
Brunel University
How does the ancient part of the brain underlying the sense of smell create conscious awareness?
Lucid dreaming and performance on prefrontal cortical tasks
Peter T. Morgan, M.D., Ph.D.
Philip Corlett, Ph.D.
Yale University School of Medicine
What brain structures are activated when we become aware that we are dreaming?
The neurobiology and genetics of synesthesia: a gateway to consciousness
David Eagleman, Ph.D.
Baylor College of Medicine
(Second-year funding)
What genes are associated with the “crosswiring” of the senses we observe in synesthesia, where sensations such as color get mapped onto other domains, such as numbers?
