Jean-Didier Vincent

Vincent has contributed significantly to the development of neuroendocrinology, which includes the study of interactions between hormones and the nervous system, the brain being also considered as an endocrine gland. He has a more pessimistic vision than his colleague Boris Cyrulnik about what predetermines human behaviour and believes in the primacy of the biological over reason, stating in 2013 in the film La Possibilité d'être humain : "L'homme est libre, oui, mais en liberté surveillée".

On 5 October 2012, during the program La Tête au carré, broadcast on France Inter, a new test likely to diagnose trisomy 21 in early pregnancy was discussed. Vincent defended this prenatal diagnosis, claiming that "Down's syndrome is a poison in a family. "During the program, Jean-Didier Vincent revisited this statement, which was considered "violent" by host Mathieu Vidard, and withdrew it, calling it an "unfortunate term" but without apologizing. Éléonore Laloux, a young woman with Down's syndrome and spokesperson for the collective Les Amis d'Éléonore, responded to the biologist in 2013 in a video and in March 2014 in an autobiographical book.

Jean-Didier Vincent has written several books, the most famous of which is La Biologie des passions and Élisée Reclus, géographe, anarchiste, écologiste which has received the 2010 Femina essai prize.

Jean-Didier Vincent has been President of the National Council of Programmes at the Ministry of National Education since 2002, member of the CNRS Ethics of Science Committee (COMETS) and the INRA (Institut National de Recherché en Agronomie) Ethics and Precaution Committee for Agricultural Research Applications (COMEPRA). A member of the Executive Board of the Foundation for Political Innovation until 23 January 2009, he has been President of the Association pour l'Université Numérique Francophone Mondiale (UNFM) since October 2005.

On February 12, 2008, during the television show Ce soir ou jamais, he said about Jean-Marie Le Pen: "We knew him as the white wolf, he was a bastard", and added: "he probably committed crimes, but I can't say it on the air". On 28 May 2009, the Paris Court of Appeal found him guilty of insult (first sentence) and defamation (second sentence), and sentenced him to a suspended fine of €1,500 and €4,000.

In 1988, he signed the appeal to François Mitterrand. He has carried out research in neurobiology in the United States (postdoctoral fellowship at the Brain Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles) and then in France (CNRS, Inserm).

Vincent was a hospital biologist in physiology and functional explorations at the CHRU of Bordeaux (1966-1977), Professor without a chair (1973-1978) and professor of physiology at the Bordeaux Faculty of Medicine (1979-1992). He headed the Inserm 176/CNRS "Neurobiology of Behaviours" unit at the Bordeaux University Hospital (1978-1990) before taking over as Director of the Alfred-Fessart Institute in Gif-sur-Yvette from 1992 to 2003. He is Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris Sud, Hospital Practitioner at the Kremlin-Bicêtre Hospital (1992-2006) and Professor at the Institut Universitaire de France, Chair of Neuroendocrinology at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris-Sud, Paris XI University (1994-2004).

Jean-Didier Vincent (7 June 1935) is a French neurobiologist and neuropsychiatrist. He was Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bordeaux II and then at the University of Paris-Sud. From 1991 to 2004 Vincent was Director of the Alfred-Fessard Institute of Neurobiology at the CNRS. He has been a member of both the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Medicine since 18 November 2003.