The Lighthouse | Exploring science's blind spots | The Centre for Conscious Design

The Centre for Conscious Design

The Lighthouse | Exploring science’s blind spots

November 7, 2024 – 1:00 pm

8:00 am

EST

2:00 pm

CET

6:30 pm

IST

11:30 pm (November 7)

ACST

Online

Become a Member

Event Recordings

We believe that asking ourselves questions is a form of shedding light, expanding our awareness, our consciousness. Asking a question is a provocation to observe, to inquire, to test, and ultimately to learn and unlearn. In this spirit, we invite you to collectively contemplate our trajectory as a society, to reimagine ourselves through our relationship with place.

Lighthouse events gather the CCD community to set a path of inquiry for the field of Conscious Design and the Conscious Cities Movement. In this event, leading figures in the neuroscience of spatial experience will invite us to explore science’s blind spots. What are the questions that aren’t being asked, and why? What do we stand to gain from exploring the lesser known, and how might we do it?

The questions raised will be gathered and presented as points of departure for upcoming research, writing, and events for the future, including at the following year’s Conscious Cities Festival.

Three of our Lighthouse Fellows, Susan Magsamen, Colin Ellard, and Hugo Spiers will each deliver a short talk. Afterwards, all participants will be invited to smaller breakout rooms where you will have the opportunity to connect and share ideas and provocations.

Event length: 1 hour 30 minutes

This event is part of an event series

Purpose & Meaning

Connection & Belonging

Health & Wellbeing

Explore the CCD's Designing for Life Framework

Hosted by

Organised by

Itai Palti

Susan Magsamen

International Arts + Mind Lab, Johns Hopkins University

About

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a groundbreaking neuroaesthetics initiative at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute. She is also the author of Impact Thinking, an interdisciplinary translational research model, and co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us written for the general public. Susan’s work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education.

Prof. Colin Ellard

Urban Realities Laboratory – University of Waterloo Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health

About

Colin Ellard is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory. Ellard works at the intersection of urban and architectural design and experimental psychology. He has developed a novel set of methods by which the human response to the built environment can be measured using a toolkit consisting of both traditional psychological methods and sensor-based measurements of physiology and brain function. Ellard publishes his work frequently in the peer-reviewed scientific literature but he also engages in extensive knowledge mobilization work involving collaboration and partnership with architects, museums and other NGOs. He travels widely giving keynotes for groups interested in architecture, design, and planning. Ellard is an Urban Design and Mental Health Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow and an editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. Ellard’s most recent book is Places of the Heart (Bellevue Literary Press, 2015).

Prof. Hugo Spiers

UCL Vice Dean for Enterprise, Faculty of Brain Sciences Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation Department of Experimental Psychology University College London

About

Hugo Spiers is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology and Vice Dean for Innovation and Enterprise in the Faculty of Brain Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and Vice Chair of the UK Chapter of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture.

Professor Spiers’ research explores how our brain constructs representations of the world and uses them to recall the past, navigate the present and imagine the future. His research team use a range of methods including brain imaging, neuropsychological testing, virtual reality, and agent-based simulations to understand brain function and spatial cognition. He co-led the Sea Hero Quest project which tested over 4 million people on their navigation skills via the app Sea Hero Quest.