Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts

Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts (identical twins, November 23, 1969) are neuroscientists known in the fields of academic cognitive neuroscience, psychophysiology, and clinical research, with a considerable number of publications in scientific journals, book chapters and a lecturing practice. They are Co-Heads of Research at the BM-SCIENCE – Brain and Mind Technologies Research Centre in Finland. Before that they were senior researchers at the Cognitive Science and Technology Research Group in Laboratory of Computational Engineering at Helsinki University of Technology; at the Human Brain Research Group in Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University; at the State Scientific Centre of Russian Federation - Institute for Biomedical Problems. They were educated at the Moscow State University and later obtained their PhD(s) in 1998 at the Human Physiology Department of the same University.

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They are best known for their articulation of the Operational Architectonics of brain and mind functioning (originally published in Brain and Mind journal, 2001: Operational Architectonics of the Human Brain Biopotential Field: Towards Solving the Mind-Brain Problem.Brain and Mind, 2, 261-296; see also Mapping of the brain operational architectonics.Chapter 2. In: Chen, F.J. (Ed.) Focus on Brain Mapping Research. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. 2005. pp. 59-98). In the framework of this theory they suggested the functional isomorphism between STRUCTURE (not just features) of phenomenal consciousness and STRUCTURE of operational architectonics of brain electromagnetic field. They argue the level of organization at which mental states, cognition (and in particular consciousness) reside might be the highly organized macro-level electrophysiological phenomena (metastable operational modules) in the brain, realized by the coordinated electrical activity (operational synchrony) of many neuronal populations dispersed throughout the brain.

They are also known for advocating a viewpoint that the basic source of the observed nonstationarity in brain electromagnetic (EEG/MEG) signal is not due to the casual influences of the external stimuli on the brain mechanisms, but rather it is a reflection of switching of the inherent metastable states of neural assemblies during brain functioning (including cognition).

They serve as reviewers of the journals Consciousness and Cognition, Brain and Mind, Brain Research, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, and Signal Processing.

See also

• Philosophy of mind, Qualia, Metastability in the brain