Why are some things relatively easy to express in language (e.g., geometric shapes) but others hard (e.g., odors)? Various explanations have been suggested for this differential ineffability (i.e., the impossibility of putting phenomena into words). Perhaps it is due to something fundamental about the cognitive architecture of our mind~brains. The ease of naming visual as opposed olfactory entities, for example, has been attributed the amount brain area devoted to processing each sensory modality.

Children’s differences in school performance have pervasive long-term influence on their education, health, and wellbeing. Children’s differences in school performance are evident from the first day of primary school and are relatively stable throughout the years of compulsory education. The major source of children’s differences in school performance is family background, not schools.

Abstract:

For a long time, economists have assumed that we were cold, self-centred, rational decision makers – so-called Homo economicus; the last few decades have shattered this view. The world we live in and the situations we face are of course rich and complex, revealing puzzling aspects of our behaviour. Optimally Irrational argues that our improved understanding of human behaviour shows that apparent 'biases' are good solutions to practical problems – that many of the 'flaws' identified by behavioural economics are actually adaptive solutions.

Music around the world is incredibly diverse, yet some musical features are widely shared. This raises a question: in what respects does music sound the same or different to people from different cultures? In this talk I will share the results of recent research with the Tsimane’, an indigenous Amazonian society in Bolivia who have limited exposure to Western music. This work suggests that there are several universal features of pitch and harmony perception that may constrain musical behavior around the world.

The function of sleep is arguably one of the last great unresolved questions in biology. One approach to tackle this question is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how animals sleep in challenging environments.

Des progrès considérables ont récemment été réalisés dans le domaine du traitement du langage naturel : les algorithmes d'apprentissage profond sont de plus en plus capables de générer, de résumer, de traduire et de classer des textes. Pourtant, ces modèles linguistiques ne parviennent toujours pas à égaler les capacités linguistiques des humains.

DRhyaDS, un projet à la frontière entre traitement du signal, psycholinguistique et neurolinguistique