Berit Brogaard

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.

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.

Brogaard argues that love is an emotion; that it can be, at turns, both rational and irrational; and that it can be manifested in degrees. We can love one person more than another and we can love a person a little or a lot or not at all and love is not always something we consciously feel. However, love—like other emotions, both conscious and unconscious—is subject to rational control, and falling in or out of it can be a deliberate choice.

Brogaard and co-author Kristian Marlow argue that our brains constantly process a huge amount of information below our awareness, and what individuals with savant syndrome have in common is that through practice, injury, an innate brain disorder, or even more unusual circumstances, they have managed to gain a degree of conscious access to the brain's innate potent processing power. Delving into the neurological underpinnings of savant syndrome, the authors reveal how we can acquire some of these skills ourselves—from perfect pitch and lightning fast math skills to supercharged creativity.

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 Cosmo 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.

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. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Consciousness and the Philosophy Program directed by David Chalmers at 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. She has taught at the University of Miami since 2014.

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. 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.

Berit Oskar Brogaard (born August 28, 1974) 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 is also co-editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report.