Stanislas Dehaene

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Stanislas Dehaene 2014

Stanislas Dehaene (born May 12, 1965 in Roubaix ) is a French neuroscientist and professor at the Collège de France . His main area of ​​work is cognitive neuroscience , in particular numerical cognition and the theory of the neural correlates of consciousness . Dehaene is one of the most influential researchers in the field of mental processing of mathematical problems and has significantly influenced the cognitive science debate in France.

Life

After studying mathematics at the École normal supérieure from 1984 to 1989, Dehaene turned to neuroscience , for which he was inspired by Jean-Pierre Changeux's influential book L'Homme neuronal . After completing his PhD in psychology, Dehaene worked in Michael Posner's research group at the University of Oregon .

From 1997 to 2005 he was Research Director at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM, French National Institute for Medical Research).

Since 2005 he has been director of the Institute for Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France. He is co-editor of the journals Science , Cognition and Frontiers in Neurosciences , as well as a board member of NeuroImage , PLoS Biology and Mind Brain and Education .

In 2001 Dehaene received the Jean Louis Signoret Prize . In 2003 he was awarded the Louis D. Prize of the Institut de France for his work in the field of numerical cognition , the Prix ​​Roger de Spoelberch in 2012 and the Brain Prize in 2014 . Dehaene was also President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness . Since 2009 he has been a full member of the Academia Europaea , since 2010 of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . In 2014 he was elected to the EMBO . Dehaene was awarded the Rumelhart Prize for 2020 .

Services

Dehaene is best known for his research into the mental processing of mathematical problems. In his research, in addition to cognitive psychological methods, he relies in particular on imaging methods ( electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance tomography (MRT)), which, according to Dehaene, show that when solving mathematical problems, primarily areas of the frontal and parietal lobes are active. Neurological studies of brain lesions point in a similar direction .

Dehaene also argues that animals and children at the age of 6 months also have an elementary " sense of numbers ". Rats were trained to perform actions 8 or 16 times to get food. In children, attention increased when an image with 8 points was presented after presenting 16 points several times. Care was taken to ensure that the change in attention was not influenced by boundary conditions (such as the area occupied by the points). Attention also changed when the ratios of point distributions were changed (initially about the distribution ratio 2: 1, then 3: 2).

In the following, Dehaene tries to give an evolutionary and cognitive science explanation for the development of numerical cognition: “Because we live in a world of discrete and moving objects, the extraction of numbers is very useful. They can help track down enemies or choose the best spot to forage, just to mention two examples. This is why evolution has endowed the brains of us and many animals with simple numerical mechanisms. In animals these mechanisms are very simple […]. We humans also have the ability to use language and symbolic representation. This has enabled us to develop exact mental representations for large numbers and algorithms for precise calculations. "

In recent years Dehaene has increasingly turned to a general theory of consciousness, with particular reference to Bernard Baars ' theory of the global workspace theory . Baars argues that cognitive processes become conscious precisely when they are presented in a global workspace and thus become accessible to other cognitive processes. A perception becomes aware, for example, when it enters this workspace and can thus become the object of explicit reflection, learning, problem-solving or remembering. Dehaene tries to place Baars' largely psychological model on a brain-physiologically realistic foundation.

Fonts

  • (Ed.): Numerical Cognition ( Cognition , special issue). Blackwell, Oxford 1993. ISBN 1-55786-444-6
  • (Ed.): Le Cerveau en action: l'imagerie cérébrale en psychologie cognitive . Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1997. ISBN 2-13-048270-8
  • La Bosse des maths . Odile Jacob, Paris 1997. ISBN 0-7139-9170-4 (English: The number sense. How the Mind Creates Mathematics . Oxford University Press, New York 1997; Penguin Press, Cambridge 1997. ISBN 978-0-19-513240- 3 ; German: The sense of numbers or why we can calculate . Birkhäuser, Basel 1999. ISBN 3-7643-5960-9 )
  • (Ed.): The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2001. ISBN 0-262-54131-9
  • with Duhamel, JR, Hauser, M. and Rizzolatti, G. (Eds): From Monkey Brain to Human Brain . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2005. ISBN 0-262-04223-1
  • Vers une science de la vie mental [inaugural lecture at the Collège de France]. Fayard, Paris 2007. ISBN 2-213-63084-4
  • Les Neurones de la Lecture . Odile Jacob, Paris 2007 (English: Reading in the Brain. The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention . Viking, New York 2009. ISBN 978-0-670-02110-9 ; German: Reading. The greatest invention of mankind and what happens in our heads . Knaus, Munich 2010. ISBN 978-3-8135-0383-8 )
  • Consciousness and the Brain. Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts . Viking, New York 2014. ISBN 978-0-670-02543-5
  • How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain . Allen Lane, London 2020. ISBN 978-0-2413-6646-2

literature

  • Susan M. Fitzpatrick (Ed.): Carving our destiny. Scientific research faces a new millennium . JH Press, Washington, DC 2001, ISBN 0-309-06848-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Membership directory: Stanislas Dehaene. Academia Europaea, accessed September 1, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Member History: Stanislas Dehaene. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 10, 2018 (English, with a short biography).
  3. ↑ EMBO enlarges its membership for 50th anniversary. Press release from May 8, 2014 at the Science Information Service (idw-online.de)
  4. ↑ Feigenson, L., Dehaene, S. & Spelke, E. Core systems of number , in: Trends in Cognitive Science , vol. 8, no. 7, 2004, pp. 307-314 ISSN  1364-6613
  5. ^ Stanislas Dehaene: What Are Numbers, Really? A Cerebral Basis For Number Sense. In: The Third Culture. October 27, 1997, accessed September 8, 2010 .
  6. ^ Dehaene, S. and Naccache, L .: Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: Basic evidence and a workspace framework , in: Cognition , 2001, pp. 1-37.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dehaene, Stanislas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Roubaix , France