The SWC Lecture: Professor Stanislas Dehaene

The science of reading: From neuroscience to the classroom

Biography:

Professor Stanislas Dehaene holds the Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France in Paris. He directs the NeuroSpin centre in Saclay, south of Paris -- France's advanced neuroimaging research centre.

Stanislas Dehaene’s research investigates the neural mechanisms of human cognitive functions such as reading, calculation and language, with a particular interest for the differences between conscious and non-conscious processing, and for the impact of education on the brain. His main research findings include the discovery of automatic links between numbers and space, and the central role of the intraparietal sulcus in number sense; the operation of the ''visual word form area'', a left occipito-temporal region that plays a central role in learning to read; and the identification of physiological responses unique to conscious processing, supporting the theory of a ''global neuronal workspace'' for consciousness.

Prof. Dehaene has received numerous awards and prizes. In 2014, he was awarded the Grete Lundbeck Brain Prize, a 1 million € award (with G. Rizzolatti and T. Robbins). He is a member of nine academies: the National Academy of Sciences USA, the Royal Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the French Académie des Sciences, the British Academy, Academia Europaea, the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, and the European Molecular Biology Organization EMBO. In 2023, he received his third ERC Advanced Grant.

Prof. Dehaene is the author of several books for the general public, including The Number Sense, Reading in the Brain, Consciousness and the Brain, How We Learn and Seeing the Mind, which were translated into more than fifteen languages. He has also created three television documentaries and authored more than 500 scientific publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and PNAS. 90 of his articles were cited more than 500 times.

This talk will be British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted. A section of seats will be allocated in the best place from which to see the interpreter.

This event is free and open to all, but a ticket is required.

This will be a hybrid event (in-person and online).