People
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Idan Blank (iblank at mit dot edu) I am interested in language as a window to cognition. Working with Nancy and with Ev Fedorenko, I hope to specifically address questions at the intersection of semantics and epistemology: What does it mean "to understand" something? Can we define "meaning" in a cognitively significant way? How is it represented in the brain? How do language mechanisms interact with other cognitive functions to construct meaning? To start addressing such issues, I currently use fMRI to explore the resting-state functional connectivity of language and multiple-demand regions, and also employ MEG to study the processing of abstract object meanings. |
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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. |
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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 second-year graduate student in BCS working with Nancy and with Josh Tenenbaum. |
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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 Gibson lab and the Saxe lab (see my website for more details on my past and current research). |
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Jason Fischer (jason_f at mit dot edu) At a given moment, only a fraction of the visual information that reaches the brain is crucial for the task at hand; the remainder can be distracting and deleterious to performance. I want to know how the brain identifies and suppresses distracting input, what the neural fate of ignored information is, and what happens when the brain's system for ignoring distractions breaks down. To that end, in my graduate work with Dr. David Whitney at UC Berkeley, I studied how selective attention gates visual responses in the human cortex and thalamus. As a postdoctoral scholar in the Kanwisher Lab, in collaboration with Dr. Yuhong Jiang at the University of Minnesota, I am extending this research to investigate visual attention in people with autism spectrum disorder, using fMRI and psychophysics. I'm particularly interested in whether and how attentional deficits might underlie some of the core clinical symptoms of autism. |
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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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Charlie (Charlie at mit dot edu) |
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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. |
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Kami Koldewyn (kamik at mit dot edu) I investigate the cognitive and neural architecture of social perception across typical and atypical development. In doing so, my work seeks to answer three intertwined questions: 1) How is social perception and its development altered in autism spectrum disorders and what are the neural bases of these social deficits? 2) How does the social perception system arise and change across typical development? and 3) What is the cognitive and neural architecture of social perception in typical adults? To address these questions, I use a variety of methods, including behavioral and eye-tracking paradigms, visual psychophysics and both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in individuals with developmental disorders as well as typical children and adults. I received my Ph.D. in Neuroscience at UC Davis, working with Susan Rivera, Randi Hagerman and David Whitney and have been a postdoc in the Kanwisher lab since the fall of 2009. To read more about my work and my research interests please see my website. |
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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? |
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Zeynep Saygin (zsaygin at mit dot edu) I recently received my Ph.D. in Neuroscience from MIT under the advising of Drs. John Gabrieli and Rebecca Saxe. My research explores the relationship between neuroanatomical connectivity, measured through diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), and the neural responses underlying high-level vision and cognition. By linking connectivity patterns with neural response profiles, I hope to shed some light on the physical mechanisms which ultimately result in human behavior. To help us accomplish this, we're excitedly collaborating with the Fischl and Wald labs at MGH, and using the new and one-of-a-kind Connectom scanner, which is designed for ultra high-resolution DWI. Keep an eye out for fresh Connectom results hopefully soon! For more information about my research please check out my website. |
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Terri Scott (tlscott at mit dot edu) I graduated from New York University in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics. After teaching science at an outdoor education camp in southern California, I came back to the east coast and earned a master's degree in astronomy from Boston University. I have worked on projects in biomechanics, experimental particle physics and high energy astrophysics, and now as a technical assistant in the Kanwisher Lab, I am beginning my pursuit of a career in cognitive neuroscience. |