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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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. |
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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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Julie Golomb (jgolomb at mit dot edu) I received my PhD from Yale University working with Marvin Chun and Jamie Mazer, exploring interactions between spatial attention and eye movements. Using a combination of psychophysics, eye-tracking, fMRI, and ERP, I showed that the native coordinate system for spatial attention is retinotopic, and that a retinotopic attentional trace is present after an eye movement regardless of task relevance. As a postdoc in the Kanwisher lab, I am investigating how location information is updated across object and eye movements throughout the visual stream. More details and publications can be found on my website. |
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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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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. |
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David Pitcher (dpitcher at mit dot edu) I study the neural correlates of face processing and object recognition. For my PhD work at University College London I demonstrated that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used to selectively disrupt category-selective visual object recognition areas in the occipital cortex. I also used the temporal specificity of TMS to demonstrate when face-selective cortical areas represent face information. In the Kanwisher lab I will be extending this work to further study how and when faces are processed in the human brain. I continue to work with Brad Duchaine and Vincent Walsh at UCL and 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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Sarah Weigelt (weigelt at mit dot edu) I have worked at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany under the guidance of Lars Muckli and Wolf Singer and received my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands with Rainer Goebel being my 'promotor'. I have employed fMRI – and in particular fMRI adaptation – to study the neural correlates of visual object and motion processing, both of which with a major focus on illusions. Because of my fascination for questions related to brain plasticity, I am now extending my work in the Kanwisher Lab to face processing both in typically developing and autistic children. More information and my publications are available on my website. |