Jean-Pierre Changeux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean-Pierre Changeux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:



"Jean-Pierre Changeux (French: [ʃɑ̃ʒø]; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the nervous system up to cognitive functions. Although being famous in biological sciences for the MWC model, the identification and purification of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and the theory of epigenesis by synapse selection are also notable scientific achievements. Changeux is known by the non-scientific public for his ideas regarding the connection between mind and physical brain. As put forth in his book, Conversations on Mind, Matter and Mathematics, Changeux strongly supports the view that the nervous system functions in a projective rather than reactive style and that interaction with the environment, rather than being instructive, results in the selection amongst a diversity of preexisting internal representations."

All his scientific career, Changeux has been faithful to a handful of scientific questions, at molecular, cellular and brain levels. If one needs to seek a unifying theme to all of them, it is the conviction that selection is the basis of life processes, rather than instruction. While started as separate lines of investigations, all the research threads were tied in the recent decades within the study of allosteric mechanisms as a basis of for the involvement of nicotinic receptors in cognitive functions.

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