Prof. Dr. Nikos K. Logothetis

Emeritus Director

Emeriti

nikos.logothetis@icpbr.ac.cn

Main Focus

The aim of our basic research is to gain insights into the neural mechanisms of generative perception, learning, categorization and recognition. Over the past 50 years, the neural mechanisms underlying such capacities have been studied using diverse methodologies, among the most direct being simultaneous behavioral testing and extracellular recording in alert, trained animals. The vast majority of such experiments provide an account of the response properties of single neurons (action potentials) or groups of neurons (Extracellular Field Potentials and Multiunit activity).

Our methodological developments and experimental investigations over the last decades have been driven by the conviction that many of the above assumptions require substantial revision. We believe that research in systems neuroscience, today more than ever, demands more realistic working hypotheses —both regarding the definition of the brain’s elementary units of operation and the organization of these units within complex cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical networks.

Curriculum Vitae

Nikolaos (Nikos) K. Logothetis (NKL) is currently the Director of the International Center for Primate Brain Research (ICPBR) in Shanghai, China. He is also Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPI-BC) in Tübingen, Germany and Emeritus at the University of Manchester in the UK. His additional academic affiliations include Honorary Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Tübingen, Adjunct Professor at the Medical University in Athens, Greece, and Salk Institute, San Diego California.

NKL received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in mathematics from the University of Athens (1976) and a B.S. in biology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1980). He was also admitted to the Hellenic Conservatory of Athens in 1969, where he studied piano under the guidance of the legendary Georgios Platon (principal Pianist at the Greek National Opera in Athens), as well as music theory related to time signatures, music and rhythmic notations. In 1976, he passed his final examination for the 3rd course of the Higher Piano School.

In 1985, he received his Ph.D. in human neurobiology from the Ludwig-Maximillian’s University in Munich, and subsequently he moved to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at M.I.T, where he first worked as a postdoctoral fellow and was later promoted to Research Scientist.

In 1990 he joined the faculty of the Division of Neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine. Seven years later, he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics as Director to continue his research, which includes studies of the physiological mechanisms of visual object recognition, generative perception, and multisensory integration, as well as investigations of plasticity and neuromodulation. Parallel to this ongoing basic research, he has been developing a number of multidisciplinary methods —such as technologies combining electrophysiology, direct electrical or optical stimulation and pharmacology with structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging —that enable temporally and spatially multiscale studies of neural networks in non-human primates and rodents.