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| Simon Maus | |
|---|---|
| Name | Simon Maus |
| Birth date | 1980 |
| Birth place | Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Neuroscience, Cognitive science, Philosophy of mind |
| Workplaces | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Leipzig, Brown University |
| Alma mater | Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Oxford |
| Doctoral advisor | Patricia Churchland |
| Known for | Theory of perceptual dynamics; work on consciousness and vision |
Simon Maus is a researcher and academic known for interdisciplinary work bridging neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. He has held positions at major European and North American institutions, contributed to debates on the neural correlates of consciousness, and published on visual perception, attention, and cognition. His work interfaces with experimental laboratories, theoretical frameworks, and historical literature in the study of perception.
Maus was born in Berlin and completed early schooling in the city before pursuing undergraduate studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. He moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, enrolling at the University of Oxford to study philosophy and experimental psychology under advisors connected to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. He completed doctoral work examining mechanisms of visual processing and consciousness, drawing on traditions from phenomenology to computational models associated with David Marr and research programs at the Max Planck Society.
Maus began his academic career with postdoctoral appointments at research centers affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and later served on faculty at the University of Leipzig. He has been a visiting scholar at Brown University and collaborative institutes across Europe and North America. His teaching portfolio has included seminars on perception and graduate courses interacting with faculty in the departments of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. Maus has supervised doctoral students and participated in grant panels for organizations such as the European Research Council and national science foundations.
Maus's research program integrates experimental paradigms from visual psychophysics with neurophysiological techniques and computational modeling inspired by the work of David Marr and contemporary systems neuroscience. He has advanced theories of perceptual dynamics that address how transient neural activity in regions like the primary visual cortex and extrastriate cortex give rise to stable conscious experiences. His empirical studies have used methods associated with functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, and behavioral paradigms developed in laboratories influenced by researchers such as Semir Zeki, Christof Koch, and Alva Noë.
Key contributions include analyses of temporal binding and the role of recurrent processing between cortical areas implicated in attention networks originally characterized by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute. Maus has argued for mechanistic accounts that reconcile competing perspectives from the global workspace theory community linked to Bernard Baars and the integrated information theory lineage associated with Giulio Tononi. His comparative work evaluates data from lesion studies referencing cases reported in the history of neuropsychology and contemporary patient series from clinics associated with the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Maus has also engaged with philosophical critiques, addressing concerns from scholars in the analytic philosophy tradition and dialoguing with continental thinkers influenced by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty regarding phenomenological descriptions of perception. This interdisciplinary dialogue has informed his proposals for experimental tests that operationalize phenomenological claims within cognitive neuroscience frameworks advanced at institutions such as MIT and the University of Cambridge.
Maus has published in journals and edited volumes associated with leading publishers and societies in psychology and neuroscience. His articles appear in venues that include flagship periodicals produced by organizations like the Society for Neuroscience and interdisciplinary journals linking philosophy and empirical research. Notable works include empirical papers on temporal integration in vision, theoretical articles contrasting recurrent processing models with feedforward architectures described by researchers like Christof Koch and David Heeger, and review essays surveying the landscape of consciousness studies alongside authors such as Anil Seth and Patricia Churchland.
He has contributed chapters to edited collections from conferences hosted by the Cognitive Science Society and symposia organized by the Royal Society. Maus has also written public-facing pieces and lectures at venues such as the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities that synthesize technical findings for broader scholarly audiences.
Maus has received competitive fellowships and awards from European funding bodies, including postdoctoral fellowships and project grants tied to the European Research Council and national academies such as the German Research Foundation. He has been invited as a keynote or plenary speaker at international conferences hosted by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Vision Sciences Society. His work has been cited in major review articles and included in curated reading lists at departments across institutions like the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the Max Planck Institute network.
Maus resides in Leipzig and maintains active collaborations across Europe and North America. Outside his academic work he participates in public engagement events organized by institutions such as the Wellcome Trust and the Humboldt Forum, and contributes to interdisciplinary workshops that bring together researchers from the philosophy of mind and experimental neuroscience communities.
Category:German neuroscientists Category:Cognitive scientists