Nancy Kanwisher
Encyclopedia
Nancy Kanwisher is a Professor in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research
at MIT. She studies the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying human visual perception and cognition. Her work investigates object recognition, visual attention, and perceptual awareness, as well as response selection, social cognition and the human understanding of numbers. Her lab has identified several regions of the brain that play specialized roles in the perception of specific categories of visual stimuli such as faces, places, and bodies, most notably the fusiform face area
.
Kanwisher joined the MIT faculty in 1997, and prior to that was a faculty member at UCLA from 1990 to 1994 and at Harvard University
from 1994 to 1997. She received her Ph.D. in 1986 from MIT. In 1999, she received the National Academy of Sciences
' Troland Research Award
, and in 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
(Fusiform Face Area). In normal human subjects, this region of inferior temporal cortex is more active than other brain regions during times when the subject is viewing, recognizing, categorizing or performing any visual processing related to faces, and neurological patients with lesions in this area have been shown to be unable to recognize faces. She has used a variety of evidence to defend her theory against possibility of the effect being generated by low-level feature processing, domain-general holistic processing, attention, or expertise.
McGovern Institute for Brain Research
The McGovern Institute for Brain Research is a research institute within MIT. Its mission is to understand how the brain works and to discover new ways to prevent or treat brain disorders...
at MIT. She studies the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying human visual perception and cognition. Her work investigates object recognition, visual attention, and perceptual awareness, as well as response selection, social cognition and the human understanding of numbers. Her lab has identified several regions of the brain that play specialized roles in the perception of specific categories of visual stimuli such as faces, places, and bodies, most notably the fusiform face area
Fusiform face area
The fusiform face area is a part of the human visual system which might be specialized for facial recognition, although there is some evidence that it also processes categorical information about other objects, particularly familiar ones.-Localization:...
.
Kanwisher joined the MIT faculty in 1997, and prior to that was a faculty member at UCLA from 1990 to 1994 and at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
from 1994 to 1997. She received her Ph.D. in 1986 from MIT. In 1999, she received the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
' Troland Research Award
Troland Research Awards
The Troland Research Awards are an annual prize given by the United States National Academy of Sciences to two researchers under the age of 40 in recognition of psychological research on the relationship between consciousness and the physical world....
, and in 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Major contributions
Kanwisher is one of the primary supporters in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience of a strong localization thesis, that highly specific and high level cognitive processes are localized across subjects to specific areas of the brain. She was first to report and defend the existence of a specific cortical region devoted to face processing, a region that she called the FFAFusiform face area
The fusiform face area is a part of the human visual system which might be specialized for facial recognition, although there is some evidence that it also processes categorical information about other objects, particularly familiar ones.-Localization:...
(Fusiform Face Area). In normal human subjects, this region of inferior temporal cortex is more active than other brain regions during times when the subject is viewing, recognizing, categorizing or performing any visual processing related to faces, and neurological patients with lesions in this area have been shown to be unable to recognize faces. She has used a variety of evidence to defend her theory against possibility of the effect being generated by low-level feature processing, domain-general holistic processing, attention, or expertise.