David Rumelhart, pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, dies at 68

The Stanford psychologist created computer models that simulated human perception, language understanding and memory. BY ADAM GORLICK David Rumelhart, a psychology professor who studied how people think and learn complex skills such as reading and the use of language, has died. He was 68. Rumelhart, who died on March 13 in Michigan after suffering from a progressive debilitating neurological condition, was a pioneer in the field of cognitive neuroscience who explored the concept of connectionism - the idea that no single neuron in the human brain does its job alone in processing information. Leading a team of researchers that included James McClelland - now chair of the Psychology Department - Rumelhart created computer models in the 1970s and 1980s that simulated human perception, language understanding, memory and a wide range of other cognitive tasks. "Dave was interested in how we're able to bring thoughts together in our minds," McClelland said. "He wanted to know how we can achieve an insight or grasp what the right answer is to a subtle question." Together, Rumelhart and McClelland wrote Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition , a book that brought the concept of connectionism to a wider audience of psychologists, neuroscientists and computer scientists.