The Society of Experimental Psychologists gave its 2015 Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award to Stephen Grossberg, Wang professor of cognitive and neural systems and professor of mathematics and psychology, for his pioneering theoretical research on how brains give rise to minds.
The Society (SEP) is an academic society for experimental psychologists that meets annually to conduct plenary sessions with its members. Their objective is to “advance psychology by arranging informal conferences on experimental psychology.” With only 5-10% of experimental psychologists holding membership, admittance to the SEP is a great honor.
“SEP consists of a wonderful group of distinguished psychologists who interact in a friendly and supportive way,” says Grossberg. “Getting this award from colleagues whom I like and admire so much is very precious to me.”
The SEP wrote the following remarks about Grossberg’s work:
Over the course of his remarkable career, Stephen Grossberg has been a major pioneer and leader of theoretical research on how brains give rise to minds and how technology can emulate biological intelligence. Grossberg’s research is highly interdisciplinary, combining elements from neuroscience, psychology, applied mathematics, computer science, physics, and philosophy. In the 1960s, Grossberg began using systems of non-linear differential equations to model short-, medium-, and long-term memory.
This work proved foundational to computational neuroscience, connectionist cognitive science, and many approaches to neuromorphic technology. Grossberg discovered design principles and neural architectures that clarify how the behavior of individuals, or machines, can adapt autonomously in real-time to unexpected environmental challenges.
He introduced and made critical contributions to adaptive resonance theory, competitive learning and self-organizing maps, and content-addressable memories. His subsequent work included models of vision and image processing; object and event recognition; audition, speech and language; brain development; cognitive information processing; reinforcement learning and cognitive-emotional interactions; navigation; sensory-motor control and robotics; and mental disorders. His modeling and experimental tests involves multiple levels of brain organization ranging from individual spikes and their synchronization to cognition.
You can watch Grossberg’s lecture, which he gave after accepting his award, here.