When Physics Intersects With Neuroscience

ICTP awarded its 2024 ICTP Prize to two researchers who, although in different fields, exhibit notable creativity in their work. The two winners, Enzo Tagliazucchi and Ranjan Laha, received their prizes at a ceremony at ICTP on 27 August 2025. Both agreed to answer a few questions about their work and the ICTP Prize. Here, we feature the interview with Tagliazucchi.

Enzo Tagliazucchi studied physics and mathematics before earning a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He currently works at the Latin American Brain Institute of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile, and at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What led you to working in computational neuroscience after studying mathematics and physics?

I enjoyed studying physics very much as an undergraduate and at the time I thought problems related to neuroscience weren't as exciting. However, I soon realized that I was attracted to the theoretical beauty of physics, but that kind of beauty is only possible in fields of knowledge that are advanced and well developed. In contrast, I noticed that while I disliked studying neuroscience, I enjoyed doing research in that area because there were lots of open problems where I could make some progress with my physics background. In other words, I was attracted to computational neuroscience because I thought (and I still think) that we know very little about how the brain works.

How would you summarise the work that earned you the prize in just a few sentences?

I worked on the problem of consciousness. Much like a computer, the brain processes information to guide behaviour.  In contrast to artificial systems, however, something mysterious and unexpected happens when the brain processes information: humans have subjective experiences (i.e. consciousness) from a first-person point of view. A premise of my work is that consciousness is not related to neural computations underlying specific cognitive functions. Instead, consciousness is associated with the global routing and integration of information across the whole brain, making it an ideal object of study using tools from statistical physics. From this perspective, I characterized different states of consciousness (wakefulness, sleep, coma, etc.) applying concepts and tools from complex systems research to empirical data acquired from human and non-human primates. This work has also led to some clinical applications, especially to the problem of diagnosing patients suffering disorders of consciousness.

In commenting on the choice of this year’s ICTP Prize winners, Erio Tosatti, chair of the ICTP Prize selection committee, praised the creativity of their contributions. How do new, creative ideas come up in your work?

I think that what appears to be "creative" for an observer from a specific discipline, may in fact only be the (perhaps unexpected) application of ideas from other, seemingly unrelated fields. In that sense, I think my work is more interdisciplinary than "creative" in a traditional sense. For example, a neuroscientist may be surprised when learning how well certain metrics from statistical physics can characterise global states of consciousness, and believe that coming up with those metrics is tremendously creative. However, my work simply connects these two disciplines; the truly creative work has already been done before by others. 

This year’s prize is dedicated to Freeman Dyson, who made important contributions to quantum field theory and the mathematical formulation of quantum physics. Are you familiar with his work and how has it influenced or inspired you?

I am familiar with Dyson's work in theoretical physics because it was part of my curriculum in physics. As I mentioned in my answer to your first question, his contributions are an important part of the beautiful theoretical structure that made me fall in love with physics. Also, when I was a teenager I found the book "From Eros to Gaia" by Freeman Dyson at my uncle's library, who was an avid amateur physicist. This is a very interesting book full of colourful stories about scientists, biographical notes, and comments on scientific institutions associated with Dyson. I was fascinated by the chapter on Tomonaga, Feynman and Schwinger's Nobel Prize, and that pushed me to study physics to try to learn more about their discovery. But in hindsight, I think that this book was most influential to me because of Dyson's universal genius, leading to the realization that a physicist can make important contributions across multiple disciplines that are seemingly unrelated to physics, at least at a superficial level.

What are you most looking forward to about your visit to ICTP for the prize ceremony?

I am really looking forward to visiting the ICTP and getting to know the institution and its people. I have lots of close friends and colleagues who studied or worked at the ICTP, and I heard from them that the center is a wonderful place to foster research. However, I never had the chance to visit the center. I'm glad that I now have this opportunity, and of course I am especially happy that it is in the context of the ICTP Prize.

What does this prize mean to you?

I feel this is a huge motivation to continue doing what I do. I do love my work, but after several years of doing research I've had my fair share of high and lows, and sometimes maintaining  the excitement can be a challenge. This kind of acknowledgment is fuel that will help me keep going for many years, I hope decades.