Mathias Sablé-Meyer

Mathias Sablé-Meyer is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University College London's Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, working in Tim Behrens's lab. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Stanislas Dehaene at PSL/Collège de France and NeuroSpin, CEA, where he investigated humans' ability to manipulate highly abstract structures, particularly focusing on the perception of geometry.

His research spans cognitive neuroscience, computational modeling, and experimental psychology, with a focus on understanding the mechanistic implementation of compositional mental representations. He employs methodologies including MEG, fMRI, behavioral experiments, and computational models to investigate how humans mentally represent abstract structures like geometric shapes, language, and mathematical concepts.

Sablé-Meyer's work reveals fascinating insights about human cognitive uniqueness, particularly in geometric perception compared to non-human primates. His recent research examines sequence processing mechanisms and aims to establish foundations for mechanistic implementations of Language of Thought models. He has published in top journals including Cognitive Psychology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, PNAS, and Journal of Neuroscience.

• Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society (2023)

As a supervisor, he co-advises Master's students including Maxime Cauté, who is exploring cross-modal representation of sequences, and is involved with several other students including Svenja Kuchenhoff, Amy Wong, and others. His lab follows open science principles, with code systematically published on the Open Science Framework alongside articles.

His research program bridges cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, with implications for understanding both human cognition and developing more human-like AI systems. He maintains active collaborations across institutions including UCL, Collège de France, MIT, and École Normale Supérieure.