John Duncan

John Duncan is a Research Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge.  Following first and second degrees at the University of Oxford (1970-1976), he spent two years at the University of Oregon working as a postdoc with Michael Posner before taking up a research position (44 years and counting) with the MRC.  His research combines cognitive science, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and single cell electrophysiology, addressing the neural mechanisms of attention, intelligence and complex problem solving.  A collaboration with Robert Desimone introduced the concept of biased competition as the basis for visual selective attention, bringing together cognitive psychology and animal neurophysiology.  Considering attention more broadly, Duncan has used human brain imaging data to define a cortical “multiple-demand” or MD system, recruited in solution of many different cognitive challenges and closely linked to measures of fluid intelligence.  This work, again combining cognitive science with human brain imaging and macaque physiology, was summarised in the popular science book How intelligence happens.  Duncan is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy, and winner of the 2012 Heineken Prize in Cognitive Science.

About Dorothy:  I was first envious of Dorothy when she out-scored me in our undergraduate finals.  Then, while I tried to impress a much-admired DPhil supervisor with my reaction time experiments, Dorothy went for the more direct route of marrying him.  Despite these early scars, over the years I have come to enjoy being always one step behind.