Although being famous in biological sciences for the MWC model, the identification and purification of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and the theory of epigenesis by synapse selection are also notable scientific achievements.

As put forth in his book, Conversations on Mind, Matter and Mathematics, Changeux strongly supports the view that the nervous system functions in a projective rather than reactive style and that interaction with the environment, rather than being instructive, results in the selection amongst a diversity of preexisting internal representations.

While started as separate lines of investigations, all the research threads were tied in the recent decades within the study of allosteric mechanisms as a basis of for the involvement of nicotinic receptors in cognitive functions.

In his PhD thesis, Changeux suggested that the recognition and transmission of signals by membrane, and in particular by synapses, could use the same mechanisms as the allosteric regulation of enzymes.

In 1967, Changeux extended the MWC model to bi-dimensional lattice of receptors[8] (an idea that would also be developed three decades afterward by Dennis Bray[9]).

[10][11] His team demonstrated the existence of several interconvertible states for the nicotinic receptor, resting, open and desensitized, displaying different affinities for the ligands, such as the endogenous agonist acetylcholine.

A full mechanistic model of the nicotinic receptor from striated muscle (or electric organ) was to be provided much later, when Changeux collaborated with Stuart Edelstein, another specialist of allostery, who worked decades on hemoglobin.

[22] The improvements of purification methods developed in the group[23] allowed the proposition that the receptor was a pentameric protein,[24] a finding quickly confirmed by the team of Arthur Karlin.

The location of the ionic pore was identified, made up of the second transmembrane segment,[30] as shown also later by the groups of Shosaku Numa[31] and Ferdinand Hucho.

[42][43] In 1973, together with Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin, Changeux proposed a model describing how, during development of the nervous system, the activity of a network could cause the stabilization or regression of the synapses involved[44] and illustrated it with the neuromuscular junction.

From the mid-1980s, the group studied the compartimentalisation of the muscle cell upon development, as a model of synaptogenesis and in relation with the theoretical work on epigenesis.

Since then, he authored or co-authored several other books inspired by his teaching at the College de France: notably, Conversations on Mind Matter and Mathematics with the mathematician Alain Connes (1998), What Makes Us Think with the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (2002) and the Physiology of truth (2002) that are acknowledged as having initiated an instructive dialogue between the two often-hostile disciplines of neuroscience and philosophy.

He has also been concerned by the relationships between aesthetic experience and the brain in Raison & Plaisir (1994), The true the good the beautiful: a neurobiological approach (2012) and recently Les neurones enchantés.

Changeux has also been the curator of three major exhibitions on Art and Science: De Nicolo dell'Abate à Nicolas Poussin: aux sources du Classicisme 1550-1650 Musée Bossuet Meaux in 1988, L'Âme au Corps, Arts et Sciences, 1793-1993 (with Gérard Régnier) Galeries nationales du Grand Palais Paris in 1993-1994 and La lumière au siècle des Lumières et aujourd'hui.

Changeux has also chaired the inter-ministry commission for the conservation of the French artistic heritage since 1989, and has been member of the scientific council of the International Agency of museums since 2007.