In this third satellite event of InScience/Maastricht, we’ll explore the world of the mind and thinking from three different angles. Will deep brain stimulation change psychiatry and our concept of happiness? What did Oliver Sacks learn us about being ‘a sentient being on this beautiful planet’? And how do racial and gender biases in AI systems impact our democracy?

This program is organised in close collaboration with Lumière Cinema and shows films from this year’s festival selection. Staff members of Maastricht University will introduce the films, and afterwards give a brief response to them and answer your questions.

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
On January 15th, 2015, a few weeks after completing his memoir, Oliver Sacks learned that the rare form of cancer for which he had been treated seven years earlier had returned, and that he had only a few months to live. One month later, he sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York. For eighty hours, surrounded by family and friends, notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his dreams and fears, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it.

Guest speaker
Dr. Marko Jelicic is Associate Professor at the Section Forensic Psychology at Maastricht University.