Colloque - Mathias Sablé-Meyer : Dissecting the Language of Thought Hypothesis across Marr's Levels

Épisode de Psychologie cognitive expérimentale - Stanislas Dehaene par Collège de France · 3 octobre 2025 · 18 min

Stanislas Dehaene

Chaire Psychologie cognitive expérimentale

Année 2025-2026

Collège de France

Colloque : Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain

Theme: Human Singularity

Dissecting the Language of Thought Hypothesis across Marr's Levels

Colloque - Mathias Sablé-Meyer : Dissecting the Language of Thought Hypothesis across Marr's Levels

Mathias Sablé-Meyer

Résumé

The Language of Thought (LoT) hypothesis posits that mental representations are best understood as programme-like objects; indeed, "thoughts" share properties such as productivity and systematicity with programming languages. I tackle questions that arise from taking this hypothesis at face value and unfolding its predictions, from computational accounts to mechanistic implementation. First, zooming on humans' cognition of geometric shapes, I show that in all human groups tested (adults, children, congenitally blind), the perception of shapes is heavily influenced by geometric features. Then, I show using MEG and fMRI that the neural signature of these exact geometric properties is separate both in timing and localisation from typical visual processes. To generalise beyond quadrilaterals, I commit to a proposition for a generative language of shapes to account for the complexity of geometric shapes in humans, while implementing an algorithm for perception-as-program-inference. Finally, building on recent results in rodent neuroscience, I sketch a research programme and give preliminary results on a mechanistic understanding of how program-like representations might be implemented by populations of neurons.

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À propos du podcast

La mission de ce laboratoire est d'analyser les bases cérébrales des fonctions cognitives, chez l'homme normal et chez certains patients neurologiques, en développant et en exploitant les méthodes modernes de la neuro-imagerie conjointement à l'utilisation de paradigmes expérimentaux issus de la…

Psychologie cognitive expérimentale - Stanislas Dehaene

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