Engy › Who's who in longevity › Steven Laureys
At a glance
- Steven Laureys is a Belgian neurologist and one of the best-known researchers on consciousness. He led the Coma Science Group at the University of Liège and also works at Université Laval in Quebec.
- He studies patients with disorders of consciousness, such as coma, the vegetative state and locked-in syndrome, and how brain scans can reveal hidden awareness.
- He co-authored a well-known study (Science, 2006) in which a patient in a vegetative state was shown to respond to instructions through her brain activity.
- He later turned to meditation and its effects on the brain, writing a no-nonsense meditation book (Dutch: Het no-nonsense meditatieboek) published in several languages.
- He approaches meditation soberly, as attention training you can practise without spiritual baggage.
- For longevity, his work matters because mental calm and stress regulation are linked to brain health and well-being in later life.
- Takeaway: start with a few minutes of mindful breathing a day; regularity matters more than duration.
Recent
- Study A structured framework for human-AI resemblance: Evidence, inference and perception
- Study Many labels, shared threat processes: classifying domain-labelled anxieties by mechanism rather than context
- Study Enhanced home-based transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) for depression comorbid with borderline personality disorder (BPD): study protocol for a pilot double-blinded randomised controlled trial (TENTADIS)