Neurosemiotics

About This Site

The purpose of this site is to bring together
neurosciences and the semiotics.

The postings on this site may come from sources apparently quite remote from one another, such as aesthetics and physiology, and some other from fields closely linked, such as mythology and psychology. If you are interested in posting articles on this site please contact us at submissions@neurosemiotics.com.

Any study on the brain or on the mental signs (in reasoning, reflecting or dreaming) is of great interest to Neurosemiotics.com

Pierre Voyer

This site is moderated by Pierre Voyer. Pierre holds a Doctorate (PhD.) in Semiotics from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). He also holds a Masters Degree in Literary Studies as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Literary Studies from UQAM and one other Bachelor’s Degree in Arts from Collège Sainte-Marie, Québec. He is currently an instructor at CEGEP Lionel-Groulx, Quebec. In his spare time he is a prolific painter who delves into the abstract. He also finds time to dedicate to musical pursuits and has just recently recorded a vritual CD, as a part of a collaborative effort know as the Elsie Dee Project.

Stefan Leijnen

Can computers be creative? Where do new ideas come from? Is learning necessary for thought? Stefan Leijnen is interested in these questions. In order to gain insight into these challenging issues and their consequences, he builds simulations of complex neural networks and multi-agent societies. Often inspired by biological principles and grounded in a philosophical framework provided by pragmatism, these systems shed light into the evolutionary dynamics of neural pathway formation, the logic of firing patterns or the emergence of group behavior. Currently, Stefan is developing a stochastic neural network model in harmony with psychological models of creativity, in order to further uncover the neural roots of the creative process and its relation to human learning.

During his computer science studies Stefan Leijnen was mostly interested in robotics and followed the embodiment paradigm of Luc Steels, Rodney Brooks and others. However, after several years he decided to shift focus more towards the processes within the brain itself. At Berkeley Stefan studied under neurolinguist Terrence Deacon in order to investigate the principles of symbolic and subsymbolic processing in brain and computer. This resulted in a neural network approach to ground computational symbols in a hierarchical system of indices and icons, based on C.S. Peirce's pragmatist epistemology. The footprints of these ideas are carried further in his current research and publications.