Office 501, Galaxias Building, Block A Arch. Makarios III Avenue, 1065
Nicosia
Cyprus
- Others
- Research
The mission of AAISCS is to promote scientific research and enquiry about the nature of man and the societies it creates combining the spirit of enquiry of the ancients and the precision of experimental approach of modern science. The objectives today are emphasizing research about brain functions using non-invasive human brain imaging and the translation of the results to useful and widely accessible clinical tools. Although the research includes a wide range of investigations using auditory, somatosensory and visual stimuli, in tandem with the trend in other places the research topics related to vision tend to dominate. Projects initiated at LHBD-J studying normal mechanisms are continuing at LHBD-C with emphasis in understanding failure in pathology including psychiatric conditions (e.g. comparing brain activity for face affect processing in normal and schizophrenic subjects). AAISCS is actively seeking funding to continue the analysis of data from LHBD-J that deal with the aesthetic appreciation of music and art, and the relationship of the brain processes involved with processes during altered states of consciousness including dreaming sleep.
The first activity of AAISCS was a conference with the title ‘’Brain, Mind and Culture’’ organised in 2004 in Limassol. The next event promoted by AAISCS is the organization together with the University of Cyprus of a joint 3-day conference of two European COST Actions focusing on methods for brain imaging and its application to understanding higher human brain function, including Consciousness, in Limassol in November/December 2009.
There are five distinct scientific projects in progress exclusively at LHBD-C. AAISCS provides supports and/or collaborates in 10 other projects, some with LHBD-J (until September 2009) and other research centres in Europe, Australia and North America. All these projects involve detailed analysis of MEG data. These project range from the study of facial affect processing in normal and schizophrenic subjects, the identification of responses by stimuli places in areas of the visual field with scotoma in V1, to processing of data from attempts to move limbs above and below complete lesions in paraplegic subjects and longitudinal responses in a picture naming tasks of patients recovering from stroke.