Hélène Meunier

Fellowship 2014

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Hélène Meunier is Research Engineer (IR1) in the Laboratory of Cognitive and Adaptative Neurosciences (LNCA, UMR 7364) and she is in charge of scientific research and animal welfare at the Primate Centre of Strasbourg University. After a Ph.D. defended in 2007 that she conducted between the Université libre de Bruxelles and Strasbourg University, Hélène Meunier went to Costa Rica for a first post-doctoral research in collaboration with the Professor Perry, University of California Los Angeles, funded by the Fyssen Foundation. In 2009, she came back in France for conducting a second post-doc, funded by the ANR (The French National Research Agency), with Professor Vauclair from Aix-Marseille University. She went back to Strasbourg University when she got her position at the Primate Centre.

Hélène Meunier received several awards for her Ph.D., participated in two projects funded by the ANR, and has recently obtained funding from the ADUEIS. She teaches in Master of Neurosciences and she is in charge of several continuing educations at the University of Strasbourg. Hélène Meunier is also referent in France for the European project EUPRIM-Net, she is a member of several scientific societies and is invested as treasurer in the Francophone Society of Primatology (SFDP). Her research focuses mainly on cognitive and behavioural neurosciences in primates and she works particularly on social cognition and the Theory of Mind origins.

Comparative study between human infants and nonhuman primates on the track of the "Theory of Mind" precursors - Discrimination of prosocial versus antisocial behaviours

Post-doc: Charlotte Canteloup

A still open question is whether animals share with us some genetic endowment and social environment allowing them to acquire the ability to think about the thoughts of others in the same way than human children do. There is now a substantial evidence for psychological state attribution in chimpanzees and recent systematic studies highlight the interest of enlarging research on cognition evolution to monkey species to be able to draw reliable inferences on the evolutionary dynamics of intelligence. In this project, we will investigate the preferences of young children and monkeys between prosocial versus antisocial behaviour, using a single battery of tests through an innovative experimental design, mainly developed in our laboratory, allowing a systematic and reliable comparative approach, regardless the considered primate species. Our experiments can be conducted without the presence of a human experimenter for nonhuman species, whereas classically in comparative studies, nonhuman species are at a disadvantage because they are dealing with humans, a species other than their own. Moreover, the animals will be tested in their familiar social environment and in semi-free ranging conditions, which guarantees a high level of animal welfare and thus of scientific results. Whether positive or negative, the results of our experiments will be a precious source of information in regards of current hypotheses and still open debates on what makes human cognition so different from that of other species.