cognitive science

#1094 Cody Moser: Collective Intelligence and Cultural Innovation

May 8, 2025

Cody Moser is a PhD candidate and Fletcher Jones Fellow in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced, and a 2024 Junior Fellow at The Institute for Humane Studies. He works on questions examining the relationship between structure and adaptation in social, biological, economic, and neural systems from a complex systems perspective. To do this, he utilizes methods from network theory, agent-based modeling, and large-scale corpus analysis. More»
#1054 Kathryn Nave - A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life

Feb 3, 2025

Dr. Kathryn Nave is a Leverhulme Trust early career research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on developing a realist account of autonomy and agency, grounded in the uniquely metabolic existence of living systems, and upon critiquing the machine concept of the organism in light of this distinctive material instability. She is the author of A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life. More»
#1046 Olivia Reilly: Social Cognition and Sex Differences in the Brains of Capuchin Monkeys

Jan 16, 2025

Dr. Olivia Reilly is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hecht Lab at Harvard University. Dr. Reilly earned her B.A. in Animal Behavior and Spanish from Bucknell University. She spent two years in the postbaccalaureate IRTA program in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health prior to graduate school. Dr. Reilly completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences at Georgia State University where she studied social cognition in nonhuman primates at the Language Research Center. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Hecht Lab, she uses a comparative approach to investigate the neural and hormonal correlates of social cognition and behavior. More»
#1045 Will Gervais - Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species

Jan 13, 2025

Dr. Will Gervais is a Reader in the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London. He is a cultural and evolutionary psychologist who studies what people believe about the world. He is curious about a lot things that fall under the cultural/evolutionary psychology umbrella, but he is especially interested in atheists. What do atheists teach us about belief, morality, and what it means to be human? He is the author of Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species. More»
#1033 Michael Levin: Self, Collective Intelligence, Cognition, Life after Death, & More

Dec 16, 2024

Dr. Michael Levin is Distinguished Professor in the Biology Department and Vannevar Bush Chair, as well as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University. His work is focused on understanding the biophysical mechanisms that implement decision-making during complex pattern regulation, and harnessing endogenous bioelectric dynamics toward rational control of growth and form. More»
#1019 Réka Blazsek: Social Norms, Institutions, Ownership, and the Mental Health of PhD Students

Nov 14, 2024

Réka Blazsek is a PhD candidate at the ACES Lab (Adaptive Cognition & Economics in Society) of the Department of Cognitive Science at Central European University. She is interested in the cognitive and evolutionary roots of economic and political institutions. In other words: what are the links between the design of the mind and the design of institutions? She aims to tackle this topic by focusing on the cognitive foundations of ownership. More»
#1003 Andy Clark - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

Oct 7, 2024

Dr. Andy Clark is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. His academic interests include artificial intelligence, embodied and extended cognition, robotics, and computational neuroscience. He is the author of several books, the latest one being The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality. More»
#1000 Karl Friston: The Free Energy Principle and Active Inference: From Physics to Mind

Sep 30, 2024

Dr. Karl Friston is Professor of Imaging Neuroscience and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London. Dr. Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist and authority on brain imaging. He invented statistical parametric mapping (SPM), voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and dynamic causal modelling (DCM). His main contribution to theoretical neurobiology is a free-energy principle for action and perception. He is the author of several books, including Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. More»
#972 Susan Goldin-Meadow: Thinking with Your Hands

Jul 26, 2024

Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow is the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Psychology and Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago. She has made pioneering contributions to the study of how language is created and learned, and how the gestures that go along with speech facilitate learning and communication. Dr. Goldin-Meadow is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She’s received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship, and the David E. Rumelhart Prize. She is the author of several books, including Thinking with Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts. More»
#951 Shaun Gallagher: The Self and its Disorders

Jun 7, 2024

Dr. Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence at the University of Memphis. His areas of research include phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, especially topics related to embodiment, self, agency and intersubjectivity, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of time. Professor Gallagher was awarded the D.Phil (honoris causa) by the University of Copenhagen in 2021. He also received the Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Award [Anneliese Maier-Forschungspreis] (2012-18). He is the author of several books, the most recent one being The Self and its Disorders. More»