Professor Friston visiting NBML

Date May 4-2017

7th International Congress on Cognitive Science (ICCS) was held in Razi convention center on April 31 to May 4, 2017. Professor Karl J. Friston who was one of the keynote speakers of the congress visited the National Brain Mapping Laboratory (NBML) on the second day of his stay in Tehran. Dr. Hosseinzadeh Science and Technology Deputy of NBML, toured him around the different sections of the laboratory. He was extremely impressed by the level of the quality and availability of state-of-the art brain imaging tools in the lab; evaluating its level comparable to some of the best brain mapping centers in the world. At the end, he had a couple of suggestions for improvement of the lab and expressed his agreement on collaboration between the NBML and the Wellcome Trust center for imaging.

Prof. Friston is one of the most effective scientists in the world with more than 1000 publications and books, and around 200k citations. He is the scientific director of the Wellcome Trust center for imaging and has invented statistical parametric mapping: (SPM). SPM is an international standard for analyzing imaging data and rests on the general linear model and random field theory (developed with Keith Worsley). His main contribution to theoretical neurobiology is a variational free-energy principle.