Berit Brogaard

Berit Oskar Brogaard (born August 28, 1970) is a Danish–American philosopher specializing in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

Her recent work concerns synesthesia, savant syndrome, blindsight and perceptual reports.

She is professor of philosophy and runs a perception lab at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

She was also co-editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report until 2021.

Brogaard was born and raised in Copenhagen.

From an early age, she excelled at physics, mathematics, and biology, eventually completing her undergraduate education at the University of Copenhagen with a bachelor's degree in linguistics and philosophy.

She then studied neuroscience under the direction of Thue Schwartz at University of Copenhagen and the Danish National Hospital.

Upon completion of her degrees in Copenhagen she studied linguistics and philosophy at the University at Buffalo, where she obtained her PhD with Barry Smith as her supervisor.

Padgett was mugged in 2002.

He was hit on his head and developed a form of synesthesia and savant syndrome.

Certain objects and mathematical formulas trigger synesthetic mathematical fractals in him.

He is the first to hand-draw mathematical fractals, an ability he acquired after the incident.

In a series of functional MRI studies in Finland, Brogaard's team found uni-lateral left-side activity in the parietal and frontal areas when Padgett is exposed to well-formed mathematical formulas that give rise to synesthetic fractals in him and bi-lateral activation when he is exposed to nonsense formulas or formulas that don't give rise to synesthetic fractals.

They re-tested the results from the Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

In the TMS study, Padgett was shown formulas and asked to rate his synesthetic sensation on a scale 1–10, relative to his "baseline" percept (i.e. without TMS).

They applied TMS over the brain areas that were activated in the fMRI scan with the formulas that give rise to synesthetic experiences and found the TMS modulated two central areas.

The results establish for the first time that synesthetic imagery may be generated in areas of the brain not normally used for the creation of visual imagery.

Brogaard's lab has also studied the cognitive mechanisms underlying grapheme–color synesthesia, one of the most common forms of synesthesia.

Using a novel visual search paradigm to examine whether synesthetic colors guide the subject's attention to the location of the target they found that synesthetic experience requires selective attention to occur.

In light of this they propose a new long term potentiation model for grapheme-color projector synesthesia.

Brogaard has also contributed to the topic of whether there are unconscious perceptual processes, arguing that cases of blindsight and visual for action involve unconscious perceptual processes.

In the area of philosophy of mind, Brogaard is the first to provide a thorough analysis of perceptual words such as 'look', 'sound', 'feel', 'taste', 'smell', 'seem', 'appear', 'see' and 'hear'.

She argues that perceptual reports containing these words reflect the content of perception.

Brogaard is also the first researcher to show that consciousness comes in degrees and that there can be borderline cases of consciousness.

Imagine a case where we slowly destroy the primary visual cortex of a subject, one neuron at a time in an arbitrary fashion.

Plausibly such an individual would proceed slowly from perceiving her surroundings normally to perceiving them unconsciously.

Her academic and popular work has been featured in, among other places, A Report of the President's Council on Bioethics - Washington D.C. 2004, Danish National Radio, The Modesto Bee, UMSL newsroom, MostMost, Attract Your Soul Mate Now, Nightline, NPR, Popular Science, Science Omega, the Huffington Post, and ABC News.

In the area of cognitive neuroscience Brogaard is best known for her work on synesthesia and savant syndrome.

Her team, which consists of colleagues from the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research, and the Visual Awareness and Cognition Group, Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University School of Science, Finland, has completed a series of studies on Jason Padgett, who has acquired savant syndrome and acquired synesthesia.

She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Consciousness and the Philosophy Program directed by David Chalmers at the Australian National University from 2007 to 2009, and her first tenure-track position was at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, from 2001 to 2005.

She was subsequently appointed associate professor of philosophy (2008–2012) and Professor of Philosophy (2012–2014) at University of Missouri, St. Louis.

Since 2009 Brogaard has worked as a freelance writer for many popular media outlets, including Psychology Today, Hello Magazine and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Since then she has written about 300 popular articles on brain intervention and emotional regulation.

She has also co-authored a breakup program with counselor and relationship expert Catherine Behan entitled The Breakup Cleanse.

Brogaard's research regarding relationships has been featured in publications like Cosmopolitan where she addresses physiological components to having people one is romantically interested in not responding, or responding apathetically to their text messages.

Additionally, she has written about other contemporary social dynamics such as how to handle the consequences of work-place gossip, using reverse psychology to handle undesirable work environments, and common emotional warning signs between relationship partners.

She has taught at the University of Miami since 2014.

She has been President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology and was the first female President of the Central States Philosophical Association.

Brogaard is also a Danish-language poet.

She is co-editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, a ranking of philosophy graduate programs, since 2014.