Life Sciences Seminar: Nancy Kanwisher
Event details
| Date | 04.04.2025 |
| Hour | 15:00 › 16:00 |
| Speaker | Nancy Kanwisher |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Title: Functional Imaging of the Human Brain: A Window into the Architecture of the Mind
Abstract:
The last 20 years of brain imaging research has revealed the functional organization of the human brain in glorious detail, including a set of cortical regions each of which is specifically engaged in a particular mental task, like the recognition of faces, perceiving speech sounds, and thinking about another person’s thoughts. Each of these regions is present, in approximately the same location, in every normal person. This initial rough sketch of the functional organization of the brain can be thought of as a diagram of the major components of the human mind. But at the same time this new map is just the barest beginning, revealing a vast landscape of unanswered questions. In this talk I will survey the evidence for this picture of the human brain, the questions it opens up, and a few hints of how those questions might be approached.
Bio:
Nancy Kanwisher is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a founding member of the McGovern Institute at MIT. She joined the MIT faculty in 1997, and prior to that, served on the faculty at UCLA and Harvard University. She is well-known for her role as a mentor to young neuroscientists, and cites her own mentor, MIT professor and cognitive psychologist Molly Potter, as the reason for her successful career in neuroscience. She hosts a website with short lectures for lay audiences about human cognitive neuroscience and her undergraduate course, “The Human Brain,” is freely available to the public through MIT OpenCourseWare.
The seminar will take place in the SV 1717 from 15:00 - 16:00 and will be followed by a Coffee break/Apéro for fellow researchers to connect.
Abstract:
The last 20 years of brain imaging research has revealed the functional organization of the human brain in glorious detail, including a set of cortical regions each of which is specifically engaged in a particular mental task, like the recognition of faces, perceiving speech sounds, and thinking about another person’s thoughts. Each of these regions is present, in approximately the same location, in every normal person. This initial rough sketch of the functional organization of the brain can be thought of as a diagram of the major components of the human mind. But at the same time this new map is just the barest beginning, revealing a vast landscape of unanswered questions. In this talk I will survey the evidence for this picture of the human brain, the questions it opens up, and a few hints of how those questions might be approached.
Bio:
Nancy Kanwisher is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a founding member of the McGovern Institute at MIT. She joined the MIT faculty in 1997, and prior to that, served on the faculty at UCLA and Harvard University. She is well-known for her role as a mentor to young neuroscientists, and cites her own mentor, MIT professor and cognitive psychologist Molly Potter, as the reason for her successful career in neuroscience. She hosts a website with short lectures for lay audiences about human cognitive neuroscience and her undergraduate course, “The Human Brain,” is freely available to the public through MIT OpenCourseWare.
The seminar will take place in the SV 1717 from 15:00 - 16:00 and will be followed by a Coffee break/Apéro for fellow researchers to connect.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- EPFL Neuro AI Lab
SV Deanship