Tye Farrow was touring Prof Amir Amedi’s Institute, and exploring collaborations in co-creating enriched environments. Amir is the founding director of The Baruch Ivcher Institute For Brain, Cognition & Technology & The Ruth and Meir Rosental Brain Imaging Center at the Reichman University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
He is one of the worlds most influential scholars and author on Neuroplasticity, Brain imaging & Rehab including a recently revised critical periods theory of Hubel & Wiesel theory (re: reversed plasticity gradient theory); having published over 100 papers, with over 10,000 citations (H-factor of 43).
One of his labs multi-sensory installations is in Farrow’s SZMC Helmsley ‘butterfly’ cancer centre’s CT suite, used to reduce patient stress and anxiety, thereby showing marked improvements in outcomes.
Amir explores: “what are the roles of new or altered experiences in shaping the organization of our sensory brain? How do these experiences affect the way we perceive our bodies or represent them in our brains?”
Using multi-sensory environments, both in real life and virtual reality, whereby participants can be trained to interpret novel sensory experiences, which the effects of different sensory experiences on brain activations are recorded via neuroimaging techniques, such as fMRI, thereby exploring body-mind representations.
His research has uncovered that the body is represented in our brain much more extensively than classically conceived, namely well beyond the Penfield homunculus. This suggests that the interactions between our brain and body are more complex than previously commonly understood.
His institute’s research aims to unravel the functional roles of these novel body representations in the context of body-mind interactions, ultimately aiming at developing innovative strategies for neuro wellness; a shared goal to the underpinnings of Farrow’s work, leading to exploration collaborations.