Hope 희진 Kean

How does the neural architecture in our brains make abstract thought and logical reasoning possible?

I recently completed my PhD in Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT, advised by Evelina Fedorenko, where I studied the cognitive and neural systems that support reasoning, language, & other high-level functions (see my thesis).

As one part of this work, I led the Interesting Brains project, a large scale study of individuals with profoundly atypical neuroanatomy, yet (strikingly) preserved cognitive functions.

I am thankful to the Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN), the McGovern, and the MIT Presidential Fellowships for their generous support.

CV | Google Scholar

Main Research Lines

I study how cognitive architecture (the measurable selectivity structure in cortical systems) is implemented in the human brain, in these three main lines of research.

Interesting Brains
(Lesions project)

We are looking at cognitive architecture in the brains of individuals who sustained brain lesions early in life (many in the womb!) and whose brains have reorganized such that they show little to no behavioral effects and relocalized high-level cortical networks.
InterestingBrains.com | Media: NYT article

Logical Reasoning
(Ontology of Thought)

What is the nature of human reasoning? How do we acquire logically structured representations in the frontal-parietal Multiple Demand Network and use them to reason?
Media: Artistic collaboration

Selectivity Hypotheses
(in the Language Network)

Can we figure out which cognitive operations are being executed in our high-level cortical networks? We do this by disambiguating between hypotheses about network selectivity. For instance, in the frontotemporal Language Network , we found that sensitivity to both semantics and syntax is broadly distributed throughout the entire network (Shain*, Kean*, et al. 2024).
Media: Psychology Today article

Papers

In prep

Press and media

contact

hope kean at em eye tea dot ee dee you