CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN
COGNITION & NEUROSCIENCESCRCN

Among Bertelson’s students, four subsequently enjoyed academic careers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Monique Radeau launched a line of research on visual perception, prismatic adaptation and multisensory coordination (Thesis : « Adaptation au déplacement de l'espace visuel: contribution expérimentale », 1973) and later contributed, as a Research Associate and Research Director of the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) to several projects dedicated to psycholinguistics. Jesus Alegria’s dissertation was focused on choice reaction time (Thesis : « Contribution expérimentale à l'étude des ajustements préparatoires à court terme », 1975), but he quickly abandoned the study of mental chronometry to collaborate with Eliane Noirot on human developmental ethology (Alegria & Noirot, 1978 ; 1982). Later on, as a Professor, he turned to cognitive and linguistic development, with a particular focus on the impact of hearing disabilities on language reading and spelling acquisition. Daniel Holender, who also initially contributed to basic mental chronometry (Thesis : « Contribution expérimentale à l'étude des propriétés temporelles des ajustements préparatoires », 1975), quickly switched to the study of lexical and semantic processing . His long-standing and continuing interest in fundamental issues in psychology led to his highly cited critical Behavioural and Brain Sciences discussion of semantic activation without awareness (Holender, 1986), which is now an incontrovertible article in the psychology literature. The fourth member of the team was José Morais, whose initial interests were focused on neuropsychology and hemispheric laterality (Thesis : « Latéralité auditive et spécialisation hémisphérique », 1977). Jacques Mehler’s regular visits to Brussels as an invited professor of psycholinguistics and collaborations with portuguese colleagues led to well-known research on phonemic awareness in adult illiterates (Morais, Cary, Alegria & Bertelson, 1979).

When Paul Bertelson retired in 1991, José Morais took over and two further Concerted Research Actions continued to fund the laboratory (Language Processing in Different Modalities: Comparative Approaches, 1990-1995; The structure of the mental lexicon, 1996-2000). During this period, the group was enriched by the successive recruitments of Content, Mousty and Leybaert in the Faculty, and Kolinsky as a Research Associate of the FNRS. Claire Genevrois became a clinician at the University Hospital; Isabelle Peretz took a position at the Université de Montréal, and Ronald Peereman was recruited by the French CNRS at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon. In 1991, Axel Cleeremans came back to Brussels as a Research Associate of the F.NR.S after completing his Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University (Thesis: « Mechanisms of implicit learning: A parallel distributed processing model of sequence acquisition », 1991 ; Advisor: McClelland),  and a Cognitive Science Research Unit (Séminaire de Recherche en Sciences Cognitives, now CO3) was created in 1993.

In 2012, the five groups, whose members entertain many collaborations with each other as well as co-funded research projects, joined together to constitute the Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences (CRCN). Building the Center required collective reflection upon our shared goals and methods, as well as new visual identity. This collective soul-searching all came to life in 2014, with the creation of this web site as well as increasing interactions between the 60-strong team. The Center also had the pleasure, that same year, to recruit its newest faculty member: Fabienne Chetail, who joined LCLD. The Center regularly benefits from substantial funding from different sources. The different teams are engaged in and coordinate a 2012-2017 Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IUAP P7/33) program dedicated to the study of conscious and unconscious learning, and supported by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO). The CO3 team currently benefits from a European Research Council grant awarded to Axel Cleeremans and dedicated to the study of consciousness. CO3 is also supported by a grant from the Excellence Program of the Walloon Region and dedicated to the study of nutrition and food behaviour. The UR2NF team is currently engaged in a Concerted Research Action co-directed by Philippe Peigneux and dedicated to the study of memory consolidation in healthy and pathological subjects. Both Wim Gevers (AB&C) and Arnaud Destrebecqz (CO3 and babylab) recently obtained MIS grants from the F.R.S.-FNRS. Finally, the Center was further recently awarded a “Grands Equipements” grant from the F.R.S.-FNRS and from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, which enabled it to completely overhaul its experimental platform. Thanks to its own technical facilities as well as to easy access to the imaging facilities (fMRI, MEG, PET) of the Erasme University Hospital through the ULB Neuroscience Institute, the Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences is now a thriving community of about 60 researchers.