George S. Cree

I'm interested in how the brain gives rise to the mind. I tackle this from the point of view of a cognitive scientist, with the goal being to understand the mind well enough that we can implement it as a computer program. I prefer modeling frameworks that integrate the constraints of neurobiology, and therefore my primary interest is in the area of neural networks.

One aspect of this larger problem that really interests me is how the brain infuses sensory input with meaning. In other words, how do we acquire knowledge, how do we 'understand', and how do we use that knowledge to accomplish our goals. My past research in this area has focused on how we compute the meanings of words. I've focused on words primarily because they are relatively easy to control when used as stimuli, and are richly infused with meaning. But more generally, I'm interested in how all knowledge is acquired, represented, and computed.