Nancy Kanwisher

Nancy Kanwisher is a prominent cognitive neuroscientist renowned for her pioneering research on the functional architecture of the human brain. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is best known for her discovery of the fusiform face area, a region of the cerebral cortex specialized for face perception. Her work, utilizing techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging, has fundamentally shaped the modern understanding of functional specialization within the visual cortex and the broader organization of the human mind.

Early life and education

Born in Monterey, California, she developed an early interest in the workings of the mind. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1980. Her academic trajectory then led her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology in 1986 under the supervision of Molly Potter. Her doctoral research focused on visual attention and visual short-term memory, laying the groundwork for her future investigations into the neural basis of perception.

Academic career and research

Following her doctorate, she held a postdoctoral position at Harvard University and later joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997, she returned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she became a founding member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is currently the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her laboratory employs functional magnetic resonance imaging and other methods to map the cerebral cortex, investigating regions dedicated to specific cognitive functions such as perceiving faces, places, and bodies.

Contributions to cognitive neuroscience

Her most celebrated contribution is the identification of the fusiform face area, a finding that provided compelling evidence for domain-specific functional specialization in the human brain. This work challenged prevailing views of a uniformly general-purpose cortex and spurred the discovery of other specialized regions, including the parahippocampal place area for scene perception and the extrastriate body area. Her research has significantly advanced theories of the neural basis of visual perception, cognitive architecture, and the organization of high-level vision. She is also a noted advocate for open science, sharing her laboratory's extensive fMRI datasets publicly.

Awards and honors

Her groundbreaking research has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (often called the "Genius Grant") in 1999. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2017, she received the Rumelhart Prize for her foundational contributions to the theoretical foundations of cognitive science. She has also been honored with the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science.

Selected publications

* Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997). The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. *Journal of Neuroscience*. * Epstein, R., & Kanwisher, N. (1998). A cortical representation of the local visual environment. *Nature*. * Downing, P. E., Jiang, Y., Shuman, M., & Kanwisher, N. (2001). A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body. *Science*. * Kanwisher, N. (2010). Functional specificity in the human brain: A window into the functional architecture of the mind. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*.

Category:American neuroscientists Category:Cognitive neuroscientists Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences