Semir Zeki is Professor of Neuroesthetics at University College London, having previously held the Professorship of Neurobiology there. He has been primarily interested in studying the organization of the primate visual brain, which he has shown to consist of distinct visual areas that process different attributes of the visual world such as form, colour and motion separately and in parallel. These findings led him to explore, within a field now known as neuroesthetics, the neural mechanisms that are engaged when a visual stimulus leads to an affective state, as occurs during the experience of beauty, love and desire.
Among his books are A Vision of the Brain (1993), Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain (1999), Splendors and Miseries of the Brain (2009).
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society.