William James Prize
Encyclopedia
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness is a professional membership organization that aims to encourage research on consciousness in cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy, and other relevant disciplines in the sciences and humanities, directed toward understanding the...
.
Each year one prize is awarded for an outstanding published contribution to the empirical or philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
study of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
by a graduate student or postdoctoral scholar within five years of receiving a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
or other advanced degree.
The prize consists of:
- An award of $1000(USD);
- Invitation to present a plenaryPlenary sessionPlenary session is a term often used in conferences to define the part of the conference when all members of all parties are to attend.These sessions may contain a broad range of content from keynotes to panel discussions and are not necessarily related to a specific style of delivery.The term has...
address at the next meeting of the ASSC; - Lifetime membership in the ASSC.
Past Recipients
2010 - The seventh William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded to Yann Cojan in Toronto, Canada, on the occasion of the 14th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Scientific study of Consciousness. Cojan's paper "The brain under self-control: modulation of inhibitory and monitoring cortical networks during hypnotic paralysis" (Neuron 62, 862-875, June 25, 2009) was selected as the wining nomination. The paper demonstrates that paralysis induced by hypnosis in a go/nogo task does not involve an active inhibition of motor outputs; but instead modifies The functional connectivity of motor cortex and activity in brain areas responsible for executive control and self-monitoring. Furthermore, motor regions were found to exhibit a selective decrease in functional connectivity with premotor regions, but selective increases with the precuneus. This pattern led to the proposal that motor function could be dominated by internal representations elicited by hypnotic suggestion. Yann Cojan received his Ph.D. in neurosciences in 2006 from the Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris VI). He is presently a post-doc with Prof Patrik Vuilleumier in the Laboratory for Neurology & Imaging of Cognition in the Neurosciences Center at the University of Geneva.2009 - The sixth William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded to Joel Pearson in Berlin, Germany, on the occasion of the 13th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Scientific tudy of Consciousness. Joel's paper "The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception" (Pearson, J., Clifford, C.W.G., Tong, F. 2008, Current Biology 18, 982-986) was selected as the wining nomination. The paper demonstrates that imagining a specific visual stimulus can strongly bias which of two subsequent competing stimuli reach awareness during binocular rivalry. Further, these effects of mental imagery are manifest all the way down to low-level perceptual representations, so suggesting that mere imagination can literally shape perceptual processing. Joel Pearson received his Ph.D. in visual neuroscience in 2006 from the University of Sydney (Australia) under the supervision of Pr. Colin Clifford. After a post-doctoral term at Vanderbilt University, where he worked with Randolph Blake and Frank Tong, he is now a lecturer in the department of psychology at the University of New South Wales.
2008 - The fifth William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded to Naotsugu (Nao) Tsuchiya in Taipei, Taiwan at the 12th Annual Meeting of ASSC. Nao's publication, "Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages" (Nature Neuroscience, 2005, 8(8), 1096–1101) was selected as the winning nomination. The paper described a novel psychophysical technique, called Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). In CFS, a highly salient image presented to one eye is rendered completely invisible via inter-ocular suppression, caused by continuous flashes of random, edge-rich patterns to the other eye. CFS is a powerful suppression technique, with which an image can be reliably suppressed for a sustained duration. Using CFS, the awarded paper demonstrated that negative afterimages, which had been long believed to originate solely from adaptation in the retina, had a cortical component. Recently, CFS has been used widely in psychophysical and fMRI investigation of conscious and non-conscious visual processing. Nao Tsuchiya received a Ph.D in Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) (advisor: Dr. Christof Koch) in 2005 at Caltech, California. He is presently a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) fellow at Caltech.
2007 - The fourth William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded to Sid Kouider in Las Vegas Nevada at the 11th Annual Meeting of ASSC. Sid's publication, "Cerebral bases of subliminal and supraliminal priming during reading" (Cerebral Cortex, 2007, 17, 2019–2029) was selected as the winning nomination from the 18 nominations received for consideration. The research described in the publication examined brain activity evoked by visible and invisible stimuli, both of which were irrelevant to the task so as to minimize the involvement of attentional or strategic processes. Under these conditions, prime visibility was associated with greater activity in the bilateral posterior occipito-temporal cortices, without extension into frontal and parietal cortices. These findings suggest that there is an intermediate level of conscious processing between subliminal perception and conscious access. Sid Kouider completed his studies for a Ph.D in Cognitive Sciences in 2002 at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS/CNRS/EHESS), Paris. He is currently a CNRS Associate Researcher at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
2006 - The third William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded in Oxford England at the 10th Annual Meeting of ASSC. Publications by 16 researchers were nominated for consideration by the Prize Committee. From these nominations, the committee selected "Traveling waves of activity in early visual cortex during binocular rivalry" by Sang-Hun Lee as the winning nomination. This research combined psychophysics and fMRI to show that there is a tight linkage in humans between the dynamics of perceptual traveling waves experienced during binocular rivalry and the neural events in primary visual cortex (i.e., V1). Sang-Hun Lee received his Ph.D in Visual Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University in 2001. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Brain Science at the Seoul National University.
2005 - The second William James Prize was awarded at the 9th Annual Meeting of ASSC in Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
. Seventeen articles were nominated for consideration by the Prize Committee. From these nominations, the Committee selected "Attention to Intention" by Hakwan Lau and colleagues as the winning nomination. The article describes research showing that attending to the intention to initiate a movement (as contrasted with attending to the movement itself) leads to an enhancement of activity in the pre-supplementary motor area. This finding suggests that activity in the pre-SMA reflects the representation of intention and that attention to intention may be one way in which effective conscious control of action is possible. Hakwan Lau received his D.Phil.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in 2004, and he is currently an assistant professor at Columbia University.
2004 - The William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness was awarded for the first time at the 8th Annual Meeting of ASSC in Antwerp, Belgium. Twenty-six articles by young investigators were nominated for consideration. From these nominations, the Prize Committee selected "Brain Function in the Vegetative State" by Steven Laureys
Steven Laureys
Steven Laureys is a Belgian neurologist.-Career:Laureys graduated as a Medical Doctor from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, in 1993. While specializing in neurology he entered a research career and obtained his M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Medicine working on pain and stroke using in vivo...
and colleagues as the winning nomination. This article deals with the alteration or loss of consciousness caused by metabolic, toxic, traumatic, or anoxic pathology. Although the resultant state is often referred to as 'coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
', a variety of different states can be distinguished when behavioural assessment is combined with measures of brain activity. Steven Laureys is a research associate at the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS). He is currently working at the University of Liège
University of Liège
The University of Liège , in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French.-History:...
where he uses neuroimaging methods to study the activation patterns that can be elicited in patients despite massive overall reductions in cerebral metabolism.
Papers awarded
- Award for 2010: "The brain under self-control: modulation of inhibitory and monitoring cortical networks during hypnotic paralysis" by Yann Cojan and colleagues (Neuron, 2009, 62(6):862-75)
- Award for 2007: "Cerebral bases of subliminal and supraliminal priming during reading" by Sid Kouider and colleagues (Cerebral Cortex, 2007, 17, 2019–2029)
- Award for 2006: "Traveling waves of activity in early visual cortex during binocular rivalry" by Sang-Hun Lee and colleagues (Nature Neuroscience, 2005, 8, 22-23)
- Award for 2005: "Attention to Intention" by Hakwan Lau and colleagues (Science, 2004, 303, 1208–1210).
- Award for 2004: "Brain Function in the Vegetative State" by Steven Laureys and colleagues (Acta Neurologica Belgica, 2002, 102, 177-185).