The International Association for the Study of Dreams is pleased to announce the confirmation of our three keynote speakers for the 2013 Annual Dream Conference.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Lucid Dreaming from a Bön Buddhist Viewpoint
Tenzin is one of only a few masters of the Bön Dzogchen tradition presently living in the West. Tenzin Rinpoche is founder of the Ligmincha Institute near Charlottesville, Virginia, and is author of The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.
Kevin J. Todeschi
Edgar Cayce and the Use of Dreams for Self Guidance
Kevin is the Executive Director and CEO of Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment and Atlantic University. Author of twenty books and a nationally recognized resource on the interpretation of dreams and symbols, Kevin has taught thousands of students the art of dream interpretation.
Mark Blagrove
Dream Research: From Freud to Neuroscience
Mark Blagrove studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and is now Professor of Psychology at Swansea University, Wales. His sleep laboratory has over many years provided empirical evidence relevant to theories of the function of sleep and of dreaming. His research includes the personality and cognitive characteristics of lucid dreamers, the relationship of nightmare frequency to psychopathology, and the relationship of dream content to waking life events. He has recently published papers on the dream-lag effect, which may provide evidence for a memory consolidation function of REM sleep, this brain function being reflected in dream content.
The International Association for the Study of Dreams is pleased to announce the confirmation of our two invited speakers for the 2013 Annual Dream Conference.
Eben Alexander
Dream Experiences Accompanying My Week-Long Near-Death Experience
Eben Alexander MD, a renowned academic neurosurgeon, spent 54 years honing his scientific worldview. He thought he knew how the brain and mind worked. The circumstances of his transcendental Near-Death Experience while in a week-long meningitis-induced coma in 2008 led him to see consciousness as being independent of the brain. He is author of the best-selling book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. His experience provides us with a unique perspective on consciousness and the relationship with dreams.
Matthew Wilson
Hippocampal Memory Reactivation in Awake and Sleep States.
Professor Wilson received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his PhD. in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 1994 where he focused on the study of mechanisms of memory formation through the use of microelectrode arrays implanted in the brains of freely behaving rodents. By monitoring the coordinated activity of ensembles of large numbers of individual neurons during active behavior, sleep, and quiet wakefulness he identified a process of memory reactivation that reflected both the content and the temporal linkage of events that could constitute the basis of episodic memory. These events may reflect the animal equivalent of dreaming. His ongoing work has continued to study brain systems that contribute to learning, memory, spatial navigation, and decision-making and their possible involvement in neurological diseases and disorders. He has ongoing interests in the mechanisms of sleep and arousal, the relationship between memory and dreams, and applications of neuroscience in engineering and the study of intelligence. He is currently the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience, and Associate Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.