October the 8th, 2020 – Croatia is continually producing extremely talented people across all fields from sport to science and everything in between. 27-year-old Pavo Orepic from Ploce in the Neretva region of southern Dalmatia is yet another fine example of this.
As rogotin.hr writes on the 8th of October, 2020, on Thursday, young Pavo Orepic (27), a “child from Ploce”, successfully defended his doctoral dissertation at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), securing a doctorate in no less than cognitive neuroscience. And not only that, the competent commission nominated him for the best doctorate of the year! In four years of his doctoral studies, the talented Pavo Orepic researched technologically-induced changes in the state of consciousness in healthy people, with an emphasis placed on research into the hallucinations of “hearing voices”, which often occurs in schizophrenia.
The institute in which Pavo Orepic works has developed experimental methods in which, using only technology, they have managed to induce various hallucinations and illusions in the healthy, with the aim of identifying the brain processes that cause such altered states of consciousness. As part of this, Pavo devised an experimental procedure by which, in healthy people, he managed to cause mild hallucinations of hearing voices. Namely, over 70 percent of people who suffer from schizophrenia “hear voices” every day, and these voices are, unfortunately, mostly very negative and aggressive, and as such significantly endanger the daily lives of patients. Since it is still largely unknown how such hallucinations occur in the brain, their methods of treatment are limited. By simulating such hallucinations in controlled laboratory conditions, Pavo’s doctorate has seen a significant step taken towards understanding them, and as such will potentially contribute to the discovery of new methods of their treatment. As part of his doctorate, Pavo Orepic has written five scientific articles that have been submitted for publication in the world’s leading scientific journals.
Pavo Orepic is otherwise known to the people of Ploce and to the general public. While attending the General Gymnasium in Ploce, he placed in the finals of the competition for the Most Successful Teenager in Croatia. Prior to his doctorate, he completed his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb, and completed his graduate studies at the Institut für Technologi in Karlsruher, Germany. Every level of his education has been extremely successful. As part of his doctorate, he also spent six months working on two projects with neurosurgical patients at the Neuromodulation Center at Ohio State University (OSU) in the United States. Recently, in March 2020, he won an award at the popular world-famous competition “My thesis in 180 seconds” held in Lausanne. It is a competition that is held once a year in about 90 countries around the world and in which doctoral students, in just 180 seconds, have to explain the topic of their doctorate to a non-scientific audience using simple language.
The new doctor was born on March the 28th, 1993 in Split. He completed his primary and secondary school education in Ploce with great success. He has been training karate for many years and has a black belt. His hobbies are travelling, because he likes to meet new people, and get better acquainted with new environments and customs. So far, he has visited more than 20 countries across the world. He enjoys fitness and, when his obligations allow for it, skiing.
Watch Pavo talk about how a robot can make you hear voices here:
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