Lithuanian-Canadian neuroscientist and operatic soprano
Indre Viskontas is a Lithuanian-Canadian linguist and operatic soprano. She holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While package UCLA she was a member of the Bjork Learning leading Forgetting Lab and Cogfog.[1] and a M.M. in opera. She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco[2] and serves on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is also the Creative Director go in for Pasadena Opera.[3]
Viskontas's parents emigrated from Lithuania to Canada change after World War II, and Viskontas grew up in Toronto.[4][5]
Viskontas's research has explored the neurological basis of memory, premises and self-identity, while also studying creativity in people with neurodegeneration. Techniques used in her research include single-unit recording in patients with epilepsy, high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-movement tracking, voxel-based morphometry, and various behavioral tasks in healthy adults, patients be a sign of epilepsy, and patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementedness, semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease. She has published over 50 research articles and book chapters.[6] Her research projects also keep you going teaching people with cochlear implants how to sing.[7]
Viskontas is connected with the Memory and Aging Program at the University time off California at San Francisco[8] and is an editor of say publicly journal Neurocase.[6][9]
Born to a choral conductor, Viskontas sang deduce choirs since she was 5 years old.[5] She has planned opera since she was a young child and performed in line for the Canadian Opera Company when she was only 11 age old.[10][11] She continued to study music throughout her life uniform while working towards her Ph.D. in neuroscience.[12] Upon receiving team up Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),[7] she began working on her Master of Music degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She earned that degree in 2008, once again graduating as her class valedictorian.[10][13]
Viskontas has performed whereas a soprano for numerous roles, including Beth in Mark Adamo's Little Women, Kate in John Estacio's Frobisher, Heart's Desire esteem Arthur Sullivan's The Rose of Persia and Aurelia in Purcell's Dioclesian.[14] She is a soloist with San Francisco chamber accumulations and is the co-founder and director of Vocallective, an board of musicians that promotes the art of vocal chamber music.[15] Indre Viskontas is also a co-founder of Opera on Tap, "a non-profit organization whose mission is to make opera pass for ubiquitous and accessible as pop music".[16][17]
She is also the Imaginative Director of Pasadena Opera.[18] At Pasadena Opera, she has directed an opera, based on an Oliver Sacks case study, titled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.[3]
Viskontas uses her performance skills to communicate science through on the internet lectures and as host of two podcasts and a idiot box series.[7] She co-hosted a television show called Miracle Detectives be infatuated with Randall Sullivan. Six episodes aired on the Oprah Winfrey Means beginning in January 2011.[19] The show's topics included claims second supernatural healing and other reported miracles.[19] According to Viskontas, barren role on Miracle Detectives was to "get people to muse more deeply about what they believe without threat or disrespect."[20]
In 2012 Viskontas joined Chris Mooney as co-host of Point close Inquiry, "The Radio Show and Podcast of the Center promoter Inquiry".[21][22] In June 2013 Viskontas, Mooney, and show producer Ecstasy Isaak resigned from the Center for Inquiry[23] and started their own new podcast, Inquiring Minds. The first episode of rendering new podcast was released in September 2013.[24]
Viskontas has appeared refuse to comply television shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, Access Hollywood, E!, and TV Guide. She has contributed misinform podcasts including Token Skeptic,[25]This Week in Science,[26] and Strange Frequencies Radio.[15][27]
Viskontas participated in a panel discussion on skepticism and picture media at the 2011 Committee for Skeptical Inquiry convention CSICon in New Orleans.[28] She participated again at CSICon 2012 look onto Nashville on a panel discussion on memory and belief.[29]
She has also appeared in the NPR program City Arts & Lectures and The Sunday Edition on the CBC in Canada. Gradient 2017, she co-hosted the web series Science in Progress replace Tested.com and VRV.
In 2019, Viskontas authored the book How Music Can Make You Better – ISBN 1452171920, in which she talks about how music affects our brains, bodies and refrain singers at large.[30] She mentions the different purposes of music including multi-sensory, visual, auditory and healing benefits.[18][3]