Michael Gazzaniga

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Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12 1939) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.

In 1961, Gazzaniga graduated from Dartmouth College. In 1964, he received a Ph.D. in psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry, with primary responsibility for initiating human split-brain research. In his subsequent work he has made important advances in our understanding of functional lateralization in the brain and how the cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another.

Gazzaniga's long and distinguished publication career includes many books accessible to a lay audience, such as The Social Brain, Mind Matters, and Nature's Mind. Works such as these, along with his participation in the public television specials The Brain and The Mind, have been instrumental in making information about brain function generally accessible to the public. He recently published The Cognitive Neurosciences III, from MIT Press, which features the work of nearly 200 scientists in 94 chapters and is recognized as the sourcebook for the field. His book The Ethical Brain was published by the Dana Press in June 2005.

Gazzaniga is well known for his teaching and mentoring, including beginning and developing Centers for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis and at Dartmouth College; supervising the work and encouraging the careers of many young scientists; and founding the Neuroscience Institute and the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, of which he is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. He is much sought-after as a lively and informative speaker, and has spoken at such distinguished venues as the Royal Institution of Great Britain, where he presented the historic Friday Night Lecture inaugurated by Michael Faraday. Gazzaniga is also prominent as an advisor to various institutes involved in brain research, and is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.