17 Facts About Stanislas Dehaene

Stanislas Dehaene was born on May 12,1965 and is a French author and cognitive neuroscientist whose research centers on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness.

In 2003, together with Denis Le Bihan, Dehaene was awarded the Grand Prix scientifique de la Fondation Louis D from the Institut de France.

Stanislas Dehaene was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010.

Stanislas Dehaene studied mathematics at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris from 1984 to 1989.

Stanislas Dehaene obtained his master's degree in Applied mathematics and computer science in 1985 from the University of Paris VI.

Stanislas Dehaene turned to neuroscience and psychology after reading Jean-Pierre Changeux's book, L'Homme neuronal.

Stanislas Dehaene began to collaborate on computational neuronal models of human cognition, including working memory and task control, collaborations which continue to the present day.

Stanislas Dehaene completed his PhD in Experimental Psychology in 1989 with Jacques Mehler at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Stanislas Dehaene spent two years, from 1992 to 1994, as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, with Michael Posner at the University of Oregon.

Stanislas Dehaene returned to France in 1997 to serve as Research Director at INSERM through 2005.

Stanislas Dehaene subsequently began his own research group, which today numbers nearly 30 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and researchers.

Stanislas Dehaene is best known for his work on numerical cognition, a discipline which he popularized and synthesized with the publication of his 1997 book, The Number Sense which won the Prix Jean-Rostand for best French language general-audience scientific book.

Stanislas Dehaene began his studies of numerical cognition with Jacques Mehler, examining the cross-linguistic frequency of number words, whether numbers were understood in an analog or compositional manner, and the connection between numbers and space.

Shortly thereafter, Stanislas Dehaene began EEG and functional neuroimaging studies of these capacities, showing that parietal and frontal regions were specifically involved in mathematical cognition, including the dissociation between subtraction and multiplication observed in his previous patient studies.

Together with Pierre Pica, and Elizabeth Spelke, Stanislas Dehaene has studied the numeracy and numeral expressions of the Mundurucu.

Stanislas Dehaene subsequently turned his attention to work on the neural correlates of consciousness, leading to numerous scientific articles, an edited book, "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness" and is the Past President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

Stanislas Dehaene has developed computational models of consciousness, based on Bernard Baars's Global Workspace Theory, which suggest that only one piece of information can gain access to a "global neuronal workspace".