From birds to brains: My path to the fusiform face area (2024)
20 hours ago
- #brain-imaging
- #neuroscience
- #cognitive-science
- The author grew up in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with early exposure to science through local resources and family, co-authoring her first publication on diving birds with her father.
- Her scientific journey included adventures in Norway, studying ptarmigans on Karlsoy island, and overcoming academic struggles at MIT by joining Molly Potter's cognitive psychology lab.
- Inspired by early brain imaging studies, she pursued cognitive neuroscience despite initial setbacks, including dropping out of graduate school multiple times to explore journalism.
- A breakthrough came with the study of 'repetition blindness' for her Ph.D., leading to an NIH award and faculty positions, eventually moving to Harvard for fMRI access.
- Her first brain imaging experiment at UCLA, after a decade of effort, involved PET scans, and she later prioritized fMRI research over personal relationships.
- With collaborators, she discovered the fusiform face area (FFA) using fMRI, developing the functional region of interest (fROI) method to analyze brain activity.
- The FFA was found to be highly selective for faces, with studies showing its role in identity recognition, perceptual awareness, and mental imagery, later confirmed in infants and via neural networks.
- The fROI method enabled the discovery of other specialized brain regions for scenes, bodies, text, music, language, and social cognition, thanks to collaborations with experts.
- She emphasizes the limitations of human brain imaging compared to animal studies and expresses gratitude for the Kavli Prize, shared with researchers who advanced understanding of face patches in macaques.