Can the brain find new pathways after injury?
Morten Storm Overgaard is a new professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Department of Clinical Medicine. His research focuses on consciousness, perception and how the brain can regain lost functions after brain injury.
As a professor, Morten Storm Overgaard studies how mental functions such as perception and consciousness are realised in the brain. A key question is whether the brain always performs a task in the same way, or whether it can find new routes to achieve the same goal.
Morten Storm Overgaard investigates this, among other things, in people who experience recovery after a brain injury. He examines whether a regained function is the result of a new solution being created to replace a lost function, or whether the same function can be achieved in a brain that now works differently.
“If we only measure whether a patient gets better or worse at answering simple questions, we risk overlooking genuine improvement. Both treatment and the way we measure the effects of rehabilitation therefore need to take account of alternative strategies for performing tasks. We also need to consider whether the same function can be achieved in a brain that works differently. If that is the case, it has major implications for how we understand the brain as a whole,” says Morten Storm Overgaard.
The professor also researches consciousness and how people’s subjective experiences can be studied scientifically. Morten Storm Overgaard has developed some of the most widely used methods for studying consciousness today, while also investigating whether researchers’ methods influence the results and, consequently, their conclusions about consciousness.
Both areas of his research have implications for our fundamental understanding of what the brain is and how we should understand the relationship between its structure and function.
Morten Storm Overgaard hopes that the professorship will strengthen Aarhus University’s international position in consciousness research and advance research into neurorehabilitation.
Contact
Professor Morten Storm Overgaard
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine – Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN)
Telephone: +45 20 78 31 54
Email: morten.storm.overgaard@cfin.au.dk