People
|
Daniel D. Dilks (Danny) (dilks at mit dot edu) My research focuses on two big questions about human vision: i) Cortical plasticity in adult human vision – I want to understand whether and how visual cortex changes in adulthood, and how such neural changes affect perception, and ii) Functional organization of human visual cortex and its origins – How does the functional organization of human visual cortex get wired up in development? To address these questions, I use a variety of methods, including psychophysics, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in typical children, adults, and individuals with developmental disorders or brain damage, as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in typical adults - whatever it takes to answer the question. I received my Ph.D. in Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, in the labs of Michael McCloskey and Barbara Landau. Stop by my website for more details. |
|
Eyal Dechter (edechter at mit dot edu) I studied physics at Harvard and then spent two years as a Kanwisher lab manager. Now I am a first-year graduate student in BCS working with Nancy and with Josh Tenenbaum. |
|
Evelina Fedorenko (evelina9 at mit dot edu) I am interested in the question of the extent of domain specificity in the mind and brain with regard to language and other cognitive systems. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Kanwisher lab, I use functional MRI to investigate the extent of domain specificity, as well as the internal functional organization, of language in the human brain. I am also pursuing a number of related projects, in collaboration with the Gibson lab and the Saxe lab (see my website for more details on my past and current research). |
|
Julie Golomb (jgolomb at mit dot edu) My research explores the interactions between visual attention, memory, perception, and eye movements. I've focused most on the question of visual stability: how our brains create such rich, seamless perceptual experiences from mere snapshots of visual input. I use a variety of tools in my research, including human psychophysics, gaze-contingent eye-tracking, fMRI, ERP, and TMS. Before coming to the Kanwisher lab I received my PhD from Yale University working with Marvin Chun and Jamie Mazer. Starting Fall 2012 I'm off to a faculty position at Ohio State University. More details and publications can be found on my website. |
|
Joshua Julian (jjulian at mit dot edu) I am one of the lab managers of the Kanwisher Lab. I graduated from Binghamton University (SUNY) in 2008 with bachelor’s degrees in physics, philosophy, and mathematics, and subsequently pursued graduate work in philosophy at Tufts University. Since joining the Kanwisher Lab, I’ve worked on a number of exciting projects, including investigating plasticity in the adult human visual system, exploring the organization and specialization of the scene-selective network, investigating the development of domain-specific systems in typical and atypical populations, as well as helping to develop new fMRI data analysis methods. In the near future, I plan to pursue a doctoral degree in cognitive science. |
|
Nancy Kanwisher (ngk at mit dot edu) Lucky me! I get to work with all the brilliant and wonderful people on this page, and to think about cool questions like these: How are objects, faces, and scenes represented in the brain, and (how) do the representations of each of these classes of stimuli differ from each other? How are visual representations affected by attention, awareness, and experience? Which mental processes get their own special patch of cortex, why is it these processes and (apparenly) not others, and how do special-purpose bits of brain arise in the first place? |
|
Charlie (Charlie at mit dot edu) |
|
Alex Kell (alexkell at mit dot edu) I graduated from Dartmouth College in June 2010 where I studied neuroscience and Chinese. Before coming to the Kanwisher Lab, I worked for a year in the Graybiel lab (also at MIT) where I programmed, trained animals, and realized that my interests lie in cognition. As a lab manager/RA, I hope to learn a bunch and to be useful. I look forward to pursuing a PhD in cognitive science. |
|
Kami Koldewyn (kamik at mit dot edu) I am primarily interested in the perceptual and attentional consequences of neurodevelopmental disorders. My dissertation work, completed at UC Davis under the tutelage of Susan Rivera, Randi Hagerman and David Whitney, focused on visual motion processing in those with autism. As a postdoctoral scholar in the Kanwisher lab, I’m interested in using psychophysical and neuroimaging techniques to further explore visual motion and biological motion processing as well as spatiotemporal attention in typical and atypical development. My other interests include examining possible molecular, neurological and genetic contributions to anxiety and social reciprocity problems in autism and fragile X. |
|
Sam Norman-Haignere (svnh at mit dot edu) I’m a graduate student in the lab, and I study the functional organization of high-level auditory cortex in collaboration with Josh Mcdermott and Ev Fedorenko. Broadly, I’m interested in the basic set of neural mechanisms that allow you to extract rich, informative representations of natural sounds. I’m particularly interested in whether auditory cortex is organized in terms of important sound categories, such as music, or important sound attributes, such as pitch. What allows you to rapidly understand and appreciate a song? Do you have regions specialized for extracting musical structure, or do you process music using a more generic set of neural mechanisms, tuned to certain auditory features? |