Agenda

2018 Brain Awareness Week – the Institut Pasteur opens its doors to the public

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The 20th edition of Brain Awareness Week will be held from March 12 to 18, 2018. To mark this initiative, for the fifth year running, the Institut Pasteur will be holding a lecture and debate for the general public on the topic of the "social brain". This event will take place on the Paris campus on March 17, 2018, from 2 to 5pm in the CIS.

The debate, moderated by journalist Alain Perez from Theragora, will begin by looking at the origins of the social brain, highlighting the evolutionary processes – bipedalism, language, adaptability to different environments, etc. – that accompanied the development of primates' brains through time, giving Homo sapiens undeniable selective advantages over many millennia. The audience will then be given a chance to find out more about the neurobiological singularity of the human social brain, reflected in Homo sapiens' socio-cognitive skills and functional brain organization. What are the reciprocal causal relationships between social life and the organization of the cerebral cortex? What are the neuronal bases for the many aspects that comprise culture (cultural constructs, sharing emotions, solidarity, empathy, etc.)? In the final section, discussions will turn to the social brain and the society of the future, with topics including the new selective pressures influencing the functional organization of neural circuits, our increasing interactions with robots and machines, social media, and the phenomenon of information overload and ever faster information flows.

This event will bring together several leading specialists in paleoanthropology, neuroscience, psychology, comparative ethology of primates and philosophy of mind to discuss the future of the human social brain:

  • Jean-Pierre Changeux, Professor at the Institut Pasteur and the Collège de France (neuroscience);

  • Pauline Delahaye, Temporary Teaching and Research Assistant at Paris-Sorbonne University (zoosemiotics);

  • Guillaume Dumas, Research Associate at the Institut Pasteur and at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences (cognitive neuroscience in interindividual, social and human–machine interactions; society and arts; complex systems);

  • Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Professor at Pierre & Marie Curie University (artificial intelligence, cognitive science);

  • Jean-Jacques Hublin, Professor at the Collège de France, Director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (paleoanthropology);

  • Elisabeth Pacherie, CNRS Director of Research, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS (philosophy, cognitive science, actions, shared intentions).

The event is open to all but prior registration is required; please contact Gilles Gheusi at ggheusi@gmail.com.

 

Find out more about 2018 Brain Awareness Week (french)

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