Keynote Speakers

Maria Concetta Morrone

Maria Concetta Morrone is Professor of Physiology in the School of Medicine of the University of Pisa, and Member of the Italian National Academy Lincei (Academia Nazionale dei Lincei) and of the Academia Europaea. She is the President of the Italian Society for Neuroscience.
From an initial interest in biophysics and neurophysiology, where she made many seminal contributions, her scientific interest moved on to psychophysics, visual perception, and functional imaging in human and clinical populations. Over the years her research has spanned spatial vision, development, plasticity, attention, color, motion, robotics, vision during eye movements, multisensory perception, time perception and action. She is currently developing appropriate techniques for ultra-high field (7T) MR for studying BOLD with the resolution of cortical layer.

Casey O’Callaghan

Casey O’Callaghan is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in Saint Louis. O’Callaghan's research aims at an empirically informed understanding of sensory perception that is driven by thinking about non-visual modalities and the relationships among the senses. His publications have focused upon auditory perception, speech perception, cross-modal illusions, multimodality, synesthesia, perceptual plasticity, and sensory disabilities and diversity. O’Callaghan is author of Sounds: A Philosophical Theory; Beyond Vision: Philosophical Essays; and A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception. He received a B.A. in Philosophy and Cognitive Science from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University.
website:http://caseyocallaghan.com/

Johan Wagemans

Johan Wagemans is Full Professor at the Department of Brain & Cognition at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. He has published more than 350 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, has edited the Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization, and is Editor-in-chief of Cognition and Art & Perception. He is currently leading two large interdisciplinary research programs on perception and appreciation of images and art, one funded by the Flemish Government (Methusalem) and one funded by the European Research Council (GRAPPA). In this context, together with his PhD students and postdocs, he is conducting experimental and computational research on the aesthetics of images (natural images, professional photography, and paintings), using online studies, image statistics and machine learning, as well as multi-methods studies on aesthetic experiences in museum contexts. Some of these are also focused on multisensory aesthetic experiences (e.g., audio-visual Ganzfeld, visuo-tactile sculptures).