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Abstract

With more than a hundred billion neurons, and more than 100.000 kilometers of connecting wires inside our skull, the human brain is the most complex organ in the known universe. Recent developments of brain imaging techniques, allow unprecedented previews of the human brain in action. What happens in our brain when we learn, when we change our opinion, when we speak, when we experience emotion; it will all be discussed in this lecture. How increased insights into brain function will impact society will be discussed as well.

Peter Hagoort is director of the Max Planck Instute for Psycholinguistics (since November 2006), and the founding director of the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (1999), a cognitive neuroscience research centre at the Radboud University Nijmegen, with participation of the Universities of Maastricht, Twente, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. In addition, he is professor in cognitive neuroscience at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His own research interests relate to the domain of the human language faculty and how it is instantiated in the brain. In his research he applies neuroimaging techniques such as ERP, MEG, PET and fMRI to investigate the language system and its impairments as in aphasia, dyslexia and autism. At the Donders Centre he is currently heading the research group Neurocognition of Language. At the Max Planck Institute he is heading a department on the Neurobiology of Language. For his scientific contributions, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts Sciences (KNAW) awarded him with the Hendrik Mullerprijs in 2003. In 2004 he was awarded by the Dutch Queen with the “Knighthood of the Dutch Lion.” In 2005 he received the NWO-Spinoza Prize. Peter Hagoort is fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).