Nancy Kanwisher

Nancy Kanwisher
Nancy
Kanwisher
Research Module Co-Leader
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Department:  Brain & Cognitive Sciences Department
Lab Affiliation(s):  Kanwisher Lab

Associated Research Module: 

Associated Research Thrust: 

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. She joined the MIT faculty in 1997, and prior to that served on the faculty at UCLA and Harvard University. In 1999, she received the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.

The Kanwisher lab has used brain imaging to identify regions of the brain that play highly specialized roles in perception and cognition, including the perception of faces, places, and bodies, as well as various aspects of social cognition and language processing. Each of these regions can be identified robustly in a short functional scan in essentially every normal subject; they are part of the basic functional organization of the human mind and brain. In ongoing work the Kanwisher lab is working to better characterize the precise computations that occur in each region, to discover new functionally specific brain regions, and to understand how these regions get wired up in development and how they work together to produce cognition.

Email:  ngk@mit.edu
Room:  46-4133
Phone:  (617) 258-0721
Faculty Profile
Website: 
Lab Website:  Kanwisher Lab

Current Advisees

Jessica Chomik-Morales - Post-baccalaureate
Willian De Faria - Post-baccalaureate
Kamila Jozwik - Postdoc
Heather L Kosakowski - Graduate Student
N Apurva Ratan Murty - Postdoc
Thomas O'Connell - Postdoc
Vivian Paulun - Postdoc
R.T. Pramod - Postdoc
Aryan Zoroufi - Graduate Student

Past Advisees

Michael Cohen - Postdoc
Katharina Dobs - Research Affiliate
Elizabeth Merritt Eastman - Graduate Student
Bernhard Egger - Postdoc
Malvika R. Joshi - UROP
Rosa Lafer-Sousa - Graduate Student
Matthew Peterson - Postdoc
Sarah Schwettmann - Postdoc

Projects

Face Looking Behavior and Image Statistics in the Real World
Fast reading of action goals
Functional organization of social perception and cognition in the superior temporal sulcus
Inferring "Theory of Mind" from Videos
Intentions and goals in human interactions
Invariant representations for action recognition in the human visual system

CBMM Publications

H. L. Kosakowski, Norman‐Haignere, S., Mynick, A., Takahashi, A., Saxe, R., and Kanwisher, N., “Preliminary evidence for selective cortical responses to music in one‐month‐old infants”, Developmental Science, 2023.
T. P. O'Connell, Bonnen, T., Friedman, Y., Tewari, A., Tenenbaum, J. B., Sitzmann, V., and Kanwisher, N., “Approaching human 3D shape perception with neurally mappable models”, arXiv, 2023.
S. V. Norman-Haignere, Feather, J., Boebinger, D., Brunner, P., Ritaccio, A., McDermott, J. H., Schalk, G., and Kanwisher, N., “A neural population selective for song in human auditory cortex”, Current Biology, 2022.
F. S. Kamps, Richardson, H., N. Murty, A. Ratan, Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Using child‐friendly movie stimuli to study the development of face, place, and object regions from age 3 to 12 years”, Human Brain Mapping, 2022.
K. Dobs, Martinez-Trujillo, J., Kell, A. J. E., and Kanwisher, N., “Brain-like functional specialization emerges spontaneously in deep neural networks”, Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 11, 2022.
H. L. Kosakowski, Cohen, M. A., Takahashi, A., Keil, B., Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Selective responses to faces, scenes, and bodies in the ventral visual pathway of infants”, Current Biology, vol. 32, 2021.
M. Schrimpf, Blank, I. Asher, Tuckute, G., Kauf, C., Hosseini, E. A., Kanwisher, N., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Fedorenko, E., “The neural architecture of language: Integrative modeling converges on predictive processing”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, no. 45, p. e2105646118, 2021.
A. Ratan N. Murty, Bashivan, P., Abate, A., DiCarlo, J. J., and Kanwisher, N., “Computational models of category-selective brain regions enable high-throughput tests of selectivity”, Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, 2021.
K. Dobs, Kell, A. J. E., Martinez-Trujillo, J., Cohen, M., and Kanwisher, N., “Using task-optimized neural networks to understand why brains have specialized processing for faces ”, in Computational and Systems Neurosciences, Denver, CO, USA, 2020.
K. Dobs, Kell, A. J. E., Martinez-Trujillo, J., Cohen, M., and Kanwisher, N., “Why Are Face and Object Processing Segregated in the Human Brain? Testing Computational Hypotheses with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks ”, in Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany, 2020.
H. Richardson, Gweon, H., Dodell-Feder, D., Malloy, C., Pelton, H., Keil, B., Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Response patterns in the developing social brain are organized by social and emotion features and disrupted in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder”, Cortex, vol. 125, pp. 12 - 29, 2020.
L. Isik, Mynick, A., Pantazis, D., and Kanwisher, N., “The speed of human social interaction perception”, NeuroImage, p. 116844, 2020.
K. M. Jozwik, Lee, H., Kanwisher, N., and DiCarlo, J. J., “Are topographic deep convolutional neural networks better models of the ventral visual stream?”, in Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 2019.
K. M. Jozwik, Schrimpf, M., Kanwisher, N., and DiCarlo, J. J., “To find better neural network models of human vision, find better neural network models of primate vision”, in BioRxiv, 2019.
K. Dobs, Isik, L., Pantazis, D., and Kanwisher, N., “How face perception unfolds over time”, Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, 2019.
I. Yildirim, Wu, J., Kanwisher, N., and Tenenbaum, J. B., “An integrative computational architecture for object-driven cortex”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, vol. 55, pp. 73 - 81, 2019.
S. V. Norman-Haignere, Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J. H., and Conway, B. R., “Divergence in the functional organization of human and macaque auditory cortex revealed by fMRI responses to harmonic tones”, Nature Neuroscience, 2019.
K. Dobs, Palmer, I. A., Yuan, J., Mohsenzadeh, Y., Oliva, A., and Kanwisher, N., “Effects of Face Familiarity in Humans and Deep Neural Networks ”, in European Conference on Visual Perception, Leuven, Belgium, 2019.
M. A. Cohen, Dilks, D. D., Koldewyn, K., Weigelt, S., Feather, J., Kell, A. J. E., Keil, B., Fischl, B., Zöllei, L., Wald, L., Saxe, R., and Kanwisher, N., “Representational similarity precedes category selectivity in the developing ventral visual pathway”, NeuroImage, vol. 197, pp. 565 - 574, 2019.
M. F. Peterson, Zaun, I., Hoke, H., Jiahui, G., Duchaine, B., and Kanwisher, N., “Eye movements and retinotopic tuning in developmental prosopagnosia”, Journal of Vision, vol. 19, no. 9, p. 7, 2019.
S. Schwettmann, Tenenbaum, J. B., and Kanwisher, N., “Invariant representations of mass in the human brain”, eLife, vol. 8, 2019.
L. Isik, Singer, J., Kanwisher, N., ,, WS, A., and Kreiman, G., “What is changing when: decoding visual information in movies from human intracranial recordings”, NeuroImage, vol. 180, Part A, pp. 147-159, 2018.
L. Isik, Singer, J., Madsen, J., Kanwisher, N., and Kreiman, G., “What is changing when: Decoding visual information in movies from human intracranial recordings”, Neuroimage, 2017.
B. Deen, Richardson, H., Dilks, D. D., Takahashi, A., Keil, B., Wald, L., Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Organization of high-level visual cortex in human infants”, Nature Communications, 2017.
N. Kanwisher, “The Quest for the FFA and Where It Led”, The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 1056 - 1061, 2017.
L. Isik, Koldewyn, K., Beeler, D., and Kanwisher, N., “Perceiving social interactions in the posterior superior temporal sulcus”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no. 43, 2017.
M. F. Peterson, Lin, J., Zaun, I., and Kanwisher, N., “Individual differences in face-looking behavior generalize from the lab to the world.”, Journal of Vision, 2016.
R. Lafer-Sousa, Conway, B. R., and Kanwisher, N., “Color-Biased Regions of the Ventral Visual Pathway Lie between Face- and Place-Selective Regions in Humans, as in Macaques”, Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 1682 - 1697, 2016.
F. S. Kamps, Julian, J. B., Kubilius, J., Kanwisher, N., and Dilks, D. D., “The occipital place area represents the local elements of scenes”, NeuroImage, vol. 132, pp. 417 - 424, 2016.
M. F. Peterson, Lin, J., Zaun, I., and Kanwisher, N., “Individual Differences in Face Looking Behavior Generalize from the Lab to the World”, Journal of Vision, vol. 16, no. 7, 2016.
J. Fischer, Mikhael, J. G., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Kanwisher, N., “Functional neuroanatomy of intuitive physical inference”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 113, no. 34, pp. E5072 - E5081, 2016.
C. E. Robertson, Hermann, K., Mynick, A., Kravitz, D. J., and Kanwisher, N., “Neural Representations Integrate the Current Field of View with the Remembered 360° Panorama”, Current Biology, 2016.
D. Harari, Gao, T., Kanwisher, N., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Ullman, S., “Measuring and modeling the perception of natural and unconstrained gaze in humans and machines”. 2016.
B. Deen, Koldewyn, K., Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Functional organization of social perception and cognition in the superior temporal sulcus”, Cerebral Cortex, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 4596-4609, 2015.
B. Deen, Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Functional organization of the human superior temporal sulcus”, Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM 2015). Honolulu, HI, 2015.
B. Deen, Kanwisher, N., and Saxe, R., “Exploring the functional organization of the superior temporal sulcus with a broad set of naturalistic stimuli”. 2014.