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prof. dr. Stanislas Dehaene

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Biography of prof. dr. Stanislas Dehaene

Professor in human cognitive functions such as language, calculation and reasoning

Stanislas Dehaene received his training in mathematics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, then completed a PhD in cognitive psychology with Jacques Mehler, post-doctoral studies with Michael Posner, as well as neuronal modelling studies with Jean-Pierre Changeux. He has been working since 1997 at the Orsay brain imaging center near Paris (Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot of the Commissariat A l'Energie Atomique), where he directs the Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit since 2001. In September 2005 he was elected as a full professor on the newly created chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France in Paris.

Stanislas Dehaene's interests concern the cerebral bases of specifically human cognitive functions such as language, calculation, and reasoning. The team uses a variety of experimental methods, including mental chronometry in normal subjects, cognitive analyses of brain-lesioned patients, and brain-imaging studies with positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and high-density recordings of event-related potentials. Formal models of minimal neuronal networks are also devised and simulated in an attempt to throw some links between molecular, physiological, imaging, and behavioural data.

Stanislas Dehaene's main scientific contributions include the study of the organization of the cerebral system for number processing. Using converging evidence from PET, ERPs, fMRI, and brain lesions, Stanislas Dehaene demonstrated the central role played by a region of the intraparietal sulcus in understanding quantities and arithmetic (the number sense). He was also the first to demonstrate that subliminal presentations of words can yield detectable cortical activations in fMRI, and has used these data to support an original theory of conscious and nonconscious processing in the human brain. With neurologist Laurent Cohen, he also studied the neural networks of reading and demonstrated the crucial role of the left occipito-temporal region in word recognition (the visual word form area).

Stanislas Dehaene is the author of over 100 scientific publications in major international journals. He has received several international prizes including the McDonnell Centennial Fellowship and the Louis D prize of the French Academy of Sciences (with D. Lebihan). He has published an acclaimed book ( The number sense ), which has been translated in eight languages. He has also edited three books on brain imaging, consciousness, and brain evolution, and has authored two general-audience films on the human brain. He is the associate editor of Cognition , an international journal of Cognitive Science.

Topics

Human cognitive functions such as language, calculation, and reasoning
Consciousness
Understanding the human brain

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Books of prof. dr. Stanislas Dehaene

Title: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness
Author: Stanislas Dehaene
Publisher: The MIT Press
Language: English
Paperback: 249 pages
ISBN: 978-02-625-4131-2

Full description

This book investigates the philosophical, empirical, and theoretical bases on which a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness can be founded. The research questions reviewed include: Does perception occur without awareness? Can the neural bases of perceptual awareness be visualized with brain-imaging methods? What do unilateral neglect and extinction tell us about conscious and unconscious processing? What is the contribution of brainstem nuclei to conscious states? How can we identify mental processes uniquely associated with consciousness? An introductory chapter proposes a theoretical framework for building a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, and two concluding chapters evaluate the progress made so far.
Title: From Monkey Brain to Human Brain — A Fyssen Foundation Symposium
Author: Stanislas Dehaene, Jean-René Duhamel, Marc D. Hauser and Giacomo Rizzolatti
Publisher: The MIT Press
Language: English
Hardcover: 418 pages
ISBN: 978-02-620-4223-9

Full description

The extraordinary overlap between human and chimpanzee genomes does not result in an equal overlap between human and chimpanzee thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and emotions; there are considerable similarities but also considerable differences between human and nonhuman primate brains. From Monkey Brain to Human Brain uses the latest findings in cognitive psychology, comparative biology, and neuroscience to look at the complex patterns of convergence and divergence in primate cortical organization and function.

Several chapters examine the use of modern technologies to study primate brains, analyzing the potentials and the limitations of neuroimaging as well as genetic and computational approaches. These methods, which can be applied identically across different species of primates, help to highlight the paradox of nonlinear primate evolution—the fact that major changes in brain size and functional complexity resulted from small changes in the genome. Other chapters identify plausible analogs or homologs in nonhuman primates for such human cognitive functions as arithmetic, reading, theory of mind, and altruism; examine the role of parietofrontal circuits in the production and comprehension of actions; analyze the contributions of the prefrontal and cingulate cortices to cognitive control; and explore to what extent visual recognition and visual attention are related in humans and other primates.

The Fyssen Foundation is dedicated to encouraging scientific inquiry into the cognitive mechanisms that underlie animal and human behaviour and has long sponsored symposia on topics of central importance to the cognitive sciences.
Title: Vers une science de la vie mentale
Author: Stanislas Dehaene
Publisher: Fayard
Language: French
Paperback: 85 pages
ISBN: 978-22-136-3084-7

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La cognition humaine obéit à de strictes lois, qui n'épargnent pas même les aspects les plus subjectifs de notre perception consciente. Je crois profondément à un renouveau du programme psychophysique de Fechner, Wundt, Ribot ou Piéron, qui, devenu 'neuro-physique', viendrait s'ancrer au niveau neuronal. Nous avons l'immense chance de vivre un temps où les avancées conjointes de la psychologie et de la neuro-imagerie cognitives laissent entrevoir de rendre enfin visible, comme à crâne ouvert, l'invisible de la pensée.
Title: Les neurones de la lecture
Author: Stanislas Dehaene and Jean-Pierre Changeux
Publisher: Odile Jacob
Language: French
Paperback: 478 pages
ISBN: 978-27-381-1974-2

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Les Neurones de la lecture s'ouvre sur une énigme: comment notre cerveau de primate apprend-il à lire? Continent celte invention culturelle, -trop récente pour avoir influencé notre évolution, trouve-t-elle sa place dans notre cortex? Voici qu'émerge une nouvelle science de la lecture. Tandis que l'imagerie cérébrale en révèle les circuits corticaux, la psychologie en dissèque les mécanismes. Ces résultats inédits conduisent à une hypothèse scientifique nouvelle. Au cours de l'acquisition de la lecture, nos circuits neuronaux, conçus pour la reconnaissance des objets, doivent se recycler pour déchiffrer l'écriture - une reconversion lente, partielle, difficile, qui explique les échecs des enfants et suggère de nouvelles pistes pédagogiques. Qu'est-ce que la dyslexie? Certaines méthodes d'enseignement de la lecture sont-elles meilleures que d'autres? Pourquoi la méthode globale est-elle incompatible avec l'architecture de notre cerveau? Utilise-t-on les mêmes aires cérébrales pour lire le français, le chinois ou l'hébreu? La lecture subliminale existe-t-elle? Autant de questions auxquelles Stanislas Dehaene, spécialiste de la psychologie et de l'imagerie cérébrale, apporte l'éclairage des avancées les plus récentes des neurosciences.
Title: The Number Sense — How the Mind Creates Mathematics
Author: Stanislas Dehaene
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English
Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN: 978-01-951-3240-3

Full description

This may surprise those who have trouble carrying the remainder in division or figuring out a 15 percent tip on a $20 lunch bill, but according to mathematician and psychologist Stanislas Dehaene, mathematics is an inborn skill. In 'The Number Sense', Dehaene makes a compelling case for the human mind's innate grasp of mathematics. Take, for example, the fact that place value systems (such as the Arabic numeral system we use) arose independently in four separate civilizations — evidence of a universal sense of number. Dehaene's book is filled with examples to support his thesis, from young babies' ability to 'count' (i.e., to react when single objects are replaced by two or more) to examples of how brain damage affects various individuals' number sense. Even more fascinating is his discussion of the relationship between language and numbers. Though Dehaene's book is about mathematics, even those readers with the worst math anxiety will find 'The Number Sense' an intriguing exploration of the world of numbers — and the human mind.