The American Philosophical Society will award Gilles Laurent the 2025 Karl Spencer Lashley Award. Laurent is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Professor in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Goethe University. The award honors his “groundbreaking studies on the encoding and processing of information in neuronal populations of the central nervous system.” The award ceremony will take place on April 23, 2026, during the Society’s spring meeting.
Laurent is regarded as a pioneer in neural circuit analysis. He demonstrated that odors can be more accurately understood in the brain through coordinated activity patterns of neuronal populations, rather than by analyzing the properties of individual neurons in isolation, as was traditionally done. The actual activity patterns that occur are far fewer than theoretically posible and form a low-dimensional, continuous structure within the space of all possible patterns—corresponding to the diversity of perceived odors. Laurent not only developed new concepts and methods for studying neural networks but also leveraged evolutionary traits in various animal species to reveal general principles of brain organization. His research spans species from locusts and turtles to octopuses and lizards.
Source and further information: Max Planck Institute for Brain Resarch
