What if our memories shape the way we perceive the world?
Brit Brogaard, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, argues that the relationship between what we see and what we remember is more complex than simply perceiving our surroundings and storing that information.
Brogaard explains the traditional view using a simple example: “You see a red tomato. And then that’s processed through the brain and cognitive system. And then, if you remember seeing that tomato, that would go into long-term memory.” But her research suggests the relationship works both ways: “Long-term memory can also affect what we see.”
This is just one of the issues Brogaard has grappled with in her research, which has delved into the philosophy of perception, emotions and language, among other topics.
Brogaard has an unusual background for a philosophy professor. She completed a medical degree in neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish National Hospital in her native Denmark before earning a doctorate in philosophy from SUNY University at Buffalo.
After joining the University of Miami in 2014 as a professor of philosophy, Brogaard was recognized as a Cooper Fellow, a distinction in the College of Arts and Sciences that honors excellence in scholarship, teaching and service. She is the director of the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research and has published three books as well as more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles across various disciplines with researchers from around the world, building an extensive international research network.
Brogaard credits her ever-evolving ideas and prolific research to her relationships with students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She noted that her doctoral students introduce her to new articles and readings related to their dissertations, which ultimately influence her own research.
“The articles automatically expand your horizon, and you see some connections you wouldn’t have seen otherwise,” Brogaard said. “It motivates you to read articles and research that you would not necessarily otherwise have read.”
In 2024, when Brogaard received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Aalborg University in Denmark and could only invite one person to the awards ceremony, she decided to invite a former doctoral student, Azenet Lopez, Ph.D. ’20. Brogaard had worked closely with Lopez on her dissertation, which focused on attention. Lopez is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Munich Interactive Intelligence Initiative at the University of Munich in Germany.
Brogaard’s honorary doctorate, awarded for her research on how the brain categorizes the stimuli humans experience and sense, was one of only five conferred at a celebration marking Aalborg University’s 50th anniversary. As part of the week-long celebration, each of the honorary doctorate recipients gave a public guest lecture to present their groundbreaking research. Brogaard’s guest lecture, “Unraveling the Mystery of Savant Syndrome,” explored how consciousness and the senses interact to produce unusual or extraordinary abilities in individuals who often present other cognitive or social limitations.
Throughout her career, Brogaard has shared her philosophical research with general audiences. She has written roughly 300 articles on neuroscience and health issues for mainstream publications, including numerous articles for Psychology Today blogs on the psychology of love and extraordinary mental ability.
“It’s important to share philosophical ideas with a general audience because philosophy is often too technical and abstract for the general public to read and understand. Yet philosophy has important applications beyond philosophy, including practical applications,” explained Brogaard. “My work at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and cognitive neuroscience has led psychologists and neuroscientists to suggest collaboration to experimentally test some of these hypotheses and theories. Furthermore, as I have argued in a general-audience philosophy article, crowdsourcing from the general public can shed light on certain aspects of philosophy. But the first step in this regard is to make your ideas accessible to the general public.”
