Stephen Kosslyn

Stephen Michael Kosslyn (born 1948) is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. Kosslyn is the president of Active Learning Sciences Inc., which helps institutions design, deliver, and assess active-learning based courses and educational programs. He is also the founder and chief academic officer of Foundry College, an online two-year college.

Work
Kosslyn is best known for his work on mental imagery, the science of learning, and visual communication.

Kosslyn has made both theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of mental imagery. His theory organizes neural processing into four steps: generating, inspecting, maintaining, and transforming visual mental images. This theory revolves around the central idea that the neural representations that produce the conscious experience of visualization serve to depict, not describe, information. His empirical contributions provide evidence for the theory as well as its neural implementation. Much of this work grew out of long-standing controversy known as the "imagery debate".

Kosslyn's contributions to the science of learning hinge on the five principles he derived from empirical findings on learning and memory. He has applied those principles to the design and implementation of online courses, and used them to devise novel ways to deploy generative AI in education.

His work on visual communication led Kosslyn to develop a set of principles that guide visual display design in general and have been applied to creating and delivering slide show presentations in particular.

Biography
Kosslyn attended graduate school at Stanford University and received a PhD in psychology from Stanford in 1974. After an appointment as assistant professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins, he joined the faculty at Harvard in 1977, where he is currently listed as Professor Emeritus. At Harvard, Kosslyn served as the departmental chair, Dean of Social Sciences, and the John Lindsley Professor. He also was co-director of the Mind of the Market Lab at Harvard Business School and was an associate in the department of neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2010, Kosslyn was appointed director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Kosslyn was then the Founding Dean and Chief Academic Officer of the Minerva Schools (now Minerva University).

Between 1998 and 2002, Kosslyn received $200,000 in donations from Jeffrey Epstein for his research. A report from Harvard University shows Kosslyn had known Epstein for about nine years and supported his application as a visiting fellow in the department of psychology in September 2005. The report noted that Kosslyn did not disclose Epstein's donations in the accompanying documents. Epstein "lacked academic qualifications," but there was speculation that his application was approved with the support of Kosslyn as the head of the department. The report also noted that disclosure was not requested and Harvard—having accepted the gifts—was previously aware of this funding. Epstein withdrew from his appointment in 2006 following his arrest for sex criminal offenses.

Kosslyn has received numerous honors for his research. These include the National Academy of Sciences Initiatives in Research Award, the Prix Jean-Louis Signoret, three honorary doctorates (from the University of Caen, France; the University of Paris-Descartes, France; the University of Bern, Switzerland), a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Cattell Award. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and Academia Rodinensis pro Remediatione (Switzerland).

Publications
Kosslyn has published over 350 scientific papers and written or co-authored 16 books and edited or co-edited 14 books, including:
 * 1980. Image and Mind
 * 1983. Ghosts in the Mind's Machine
 * 1992. Wet Mind, with Olivier Koenig
 * 1994. Elements of Graph Design
 * 1994. Image and Brain
 * 2001. Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the World (2001, 2004), with R.S. Rosenberg
 * 2006. The Case for Mental Imagery, with W.L. Thompson and G. Ganis
 * 2006. Graph Design for the Eye and Mind
 * 2006. Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain with E.E. Smith
 * 2007. Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations
 * 2010. Psychology in Context, with R.S. Rosenberg
 * 2010. Abnormal Psychology (2010, 2014), with R.S. Rosenberg
 * 2011. Better PowerPoint
 * 2013. Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Surprising Insights into How You Think, with G.W. Miller
 * 2017. Building the Intentional University, edited with B. Nelson
 * 2019. Introducing Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the Group (5th edition), with R.S. Rosenberg
 * 2020. Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive
 * 2023. Active Learning with AI: A Practical Guide