People
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Daniel D. Dilks (dilks at mit dot edu) As a Postdoctoral fellow in the Kanwisher lab, I am using behavioral and fMRI data to investigate the occurrence, causes, and perceptual consequences of cortical reorganization in the human adult visual system. I received my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University where, under the tutelage of Michael McCloskey and Barbara Landau, I studied cortical plasticity, as well as visual-spatial representation in individuals with acquired brain damage, and children and adults with a genetic disorder (i.e., Williams syndrome). |
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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 Gabrieli lab, the Gibson lab and the Saxe lab (see my website for more details on my past and current research). |
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Po-Jang (Brown) Hsieh (pjh at mit dot edu) I received my Ph.D. at Dartmouth College, under the guidance of Peter Tse. I am interested in understanding how the human brain is able to perceive and experience the world. More specifically, I focus on the problem of consciousness/attention, object/surface perception, and visual form-motion integration. I have been using fMRI, DTI, and psychophysics to tackle these problems via the study of various visual illusions related to bistable illusions, perceptual fading/filling-in and apparent motion. My future goal is to keep investigating the cognitive and neural bases of object/surface perception, attention, and visual awareness with whatever techniques are necessary. More details of my interests as well as past and current publications are available on my website. |
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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? |
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David Pitcher (d dot pitcher at ucl dot ac dot uk) I am a post-doc from University College London working with Vincent Walsh and Brad Duchaine. I have been using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to impair face processing in normal participants. In the Kanwisher lab I am planning to combine these techniques with fMRI to study the effects of disruption in the extended face processing network. You can find my publications here. |
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Won Mok Shim (wshim at mit dot edu) I received my PhD at Harvard University where, under the guidance of Patrick Cavanagh, I studied the effect of attention, motion, and eye movement on position encoding. Through my PhD work using psychophysics, I showed that attention is a key mechanism underlying distortion of position representations. Then, I was a post-doc in the lab of Yuhong Jiang, where I used cognitive neuroscience tools to investigate neural correlates of capacity limit in visual attention and working memory. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Kanwisher lab, I am using behavioral and fMRI techniques to investigate how "where" and "what" information are represented in visual working memory examining higher-order visual areas in dorsal and ventral streams as well as early visual areas. |
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Ed Vul (evul at mit dot edu) As a graduate student in the Kanwisher lab, I investigate, through psychophysics, fMRI, and computational modeling, how people represent uncertainty and use it to make responses and decisions. I've done research along these lines in the context of attention and knowledge. Other ongoing work investigates the computational mechanisms governing the deployment of visual attention, and decision-making under variant sources of uncertainty. I have also done work on visual aftereffects and memory. I received a BS in Psychology and a BA in Philosophy from UCSD. I also work with Josh Tenenbaum, Hal Pashler, and Don MacLeod. You can find my publications and other trivia here. |
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Jason Webster (jwebst at mit dot edu) |
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Eyal Dechter (edechter at mit dot edu) A recent physics grad from Harvard University, I am a lab manager at the Kanwisher Lab. I hope to learn a lot and be of use. |