Wolf Singer

Wolf Singer

Biography

Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research

Wolf Singer was born in 1943 in Munich, Germany. He was accepted to study medicine at the University of Munich and completed his third year on an exchange to the University of Paris. In 1968 he completed his thesis entitled The role of telencephlic commissures in bilateral EEG-synchrony under Dr. O. Creutzfeldt at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. After obtaining his license to practice general medicine he went on to the University of Sussex in England in order to acquaint himself more closely with methods of psycho-physical examination. There he completed post-doctorate training in Psychophysics and Animal Behaviour at the department of Psychology.

In 1972 he was hired as a staff member of the Department of Neurophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry under Prof. Lux. He began this professorship in neurophysiology as coordinator of the Project "Neurophysiological basis of pattern processing in the visual system".

Upon attaining the qualification to lecturer at the university, he was offered a position at the University of Bielefeld and two years later at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich. Since 1980 he is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. Singer is also a member of the editorial board of many of the most prestigious journals in the area of neuroscience including Behavioral Brain Reasearch, Trends in Neuroscience and the Journal for Neurophysiology. He has been the president of the European Neuroscience association and is on the Board of European Science Foundation.

His laboratory has long been focused on studying the functional organization of the cerebral cortex and use-dependent synaptic plasticity both during development and in the adult system. Since the discovery of synchronous firing in the visual cortex in the mid-eighties he has pursued with great intensity the hypothesis that synchronization of distributed responses serves as a signature of relatedness in distributed parallel processing in the cerebral cortex. Singer examines the possibility that response synchronization serves the dynamic binding of neuronal responses into coherent population codes, thereby creating representations that are complementary to single cell codes.

The title of his contribution to the Cajal Conference is On the Nature of Neuronal Representations.

Academic Address

Department Neurophysiology
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
D-60528 Frankfurt, Germany

E-Mail Address / URL

Web: http://www.mpih-frankfurt.mpg.de/global/dept/singer/mitarbei/singer.htm
singer@mpih-frankfurt.mpg.de

Some bibliography

Some of his recent publications include:

Singer, W. (1995) Development and plasticity of cortical processing architectures. Science 270: 758-764.

Singer, W, Gray C. (1995) Visual feature integration and the temporal correlation hypothesis. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 18: 555-586.

Singer, W, Engel A, Kreiter A, Munk M, Neuenschwander S, Roelfsema P. (1997) Neuronal assemblies: necessity, signature and detectability. Trends in Cog. Sci. 1(7): 252-261.

Singer, W. (1999) Neuronal synchrony: a versatile code for the definition of relations? Neuron 24: 49-65.

Singer, W. (in print) Phenomenal awareness and consciousness from a neurobiological perspective. In T. Metzinger (ed) Neural Correlates of Consciousness- Empirical and Conceptual Questions: MIT Press.

	Wolf Singer
	Biography
	Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research Wolf Singer was born in 1943 in Munich, Germany. He was accepted to study medicine at the University of Munich and completed his third year on an exchange to the University of Paris. In 1968 he completed his thesis entitled The role of telencephlic commissures in bilateral EEG-synchrony under Dr. O. Creutzfeldt at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. After obtaining his license to practice general medicine he went on to the University of Sussex in England in order to acquaint himself more closely with methods of psycho-physical examination. There he completed post-doctorate training in Psychophysics and Animal Behaviour at the department of Psychology. In 1972 he was hired as a staff member of the Department of Neurophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry under Prof. Lux. He began this professorship in neurophysiology as coordinator of the Project "Neurophysiological basis of pattern processing in the visual system". Upon attaining the qualification to lecturer at the university, he was offered a position at the University of Bielefeld and two years later at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich. Since 1980 he is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. Singer is also a member of the editorial board of many of the most prestigious journals in the area of neuroscience including Behavioral Brain Reasearch, Trends in Neuroscience and the Journal for Neurophysiology. He has been the president of the European Neuroscience association and is on the Board of European Science Foundation. His laboratory has long been focused on studying the functional organization of the cerebral cortex and use-dependent synaptic plasticity both during development and in the adult system. Since the discovery of synchronous firing in the visual cortex in the mid-eighties he has pursued with great intensity the hypothesis that synchronization of distributed responses serves as a signature of relatedness in distributed parallel processing in the cerebral cortex. Singer examines the possibility that response synchronization serves the dynamic binding of neuronal responses into coherent population codes, thereby creating representations that are complementary to single cell codes. The title of his contribution to the Cajal Conference is On the Nature of Neuronal Representations.
	Academic Address
	Department Neurophysiology Max Planck Institute for Brain Research D-60528 Frankfurt, Germany
	E-Mail Address / URL
	Web: http://www.mpih-frankfurt.mpg.de/global/dept/singer/mitarbei/singer.htm singer@mpih-frankfurt.mpg.de
	Some bibliography
	Some of his recent publications include: Singer, W. (1995) Development and plasticity of cortical processing architectures. Science 270: 758-764. Singer, W, Gray C. (1995) Visual feature integration and the temporal correlation hypothesis. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 18: 555-586. Singer, W, Engel A, Kreiter A, Munk M, Neuenschwander S, Roelfsema P. (1997) Neuronal assemblies: necessity, signature and detectability. Trends in Cog. Sci. 1(7): 252-261. Singer, W. (1999) Neuronal synchrony: a versatile code for the definition of relations? Neuron 24: 49-65. Singer, W. (in print) Phenomenal awareness and consciousness from a neurobiological perspective. In T. Metzinger (ed) Neural Correlates of Consciousness- Empirical and Conceptual Questions: MIT Press.