Michael Graziano
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Princeton University, United States
Profile – Michael Graziano (b. 1967)
Michael Graziano is a composer , novelist and author of children’s books as well as Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University. His wide-ranging research includes studies of spatial perception and sensorimotor integration in monkeys, how the brain represents the body and its surroundings, and more recently the brain basis of consciousness including relationships between awareness, attention, and social perception in the human brain. His theoretical work explores the idea that awareness is a construct of the brain’s social machinery, and his ‘attention schema theory’ extends this to suggest that awareness is an attention schema computed by an expert system in the brain that attributes awareness to others as well as to oneself. Apart from his surrealist novels he is author of Consciousness and the Social Brain (2010), arguing that awareness is information and consciousness is not mysterious. Graziano is also a skilled ventriloquist when accompanied by his dummy monkey, Kevin.
More biographical information
The evolution of consciousness and brain uploading. Interview for the Brain Preservation Foundation, April 2015
Rethinking consciousness. Q&A for the Psych Report, July 2015
Dr Michael Graziano likens near death experience research to astrology. Interview for Skeptiko, February 2015
It’s all in our heads. Interview on consciousness for the American Psychological Association, June 2013
Publications
His list of publications including novels, children’s books, and quartets and symphonies
Selected publications on neuroscience
His stories and articles in The Atlantic
Quotes on Goodreads
Selected publications relevant to consciousness
Graziano, M. (2013). Consciousness and the unashamed rationalist. Huffington Post, 30 August 2013. Full text here.
Graziano, M. (2016). Consciousness engineered. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11–12), 98–115. Paywall-protected journal record here. Direct PDF download (final version) here.
Webb, T. W., and Graziano, M.S.A. (2015). The attention schema theory: A mechanistic account of subjective awareness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, article 500. Open-access full text here.
Video
Can consciousness be non-biological? Closer to Truth, October 2015
Consciousness and the social brain. Lecture, Princeton, January 2015
Consciousness and the attention schema. Lecture at Evolution and Function Summer School, University of Montreal, July 2012
Audio
Has Dr Graziano ‘solved’ consciousness? Interview on attention schema theory for Smart Drug Smarts podcast, April 2016
Dr Michael Graziano likens near death experience research to astrology. Interview for Skeptiko, February 2015 (with transcript)