Nancy Gail Kanwisher FBA (born 1958) is the Walter A Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and a researcher at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She studies the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying human visual perception and cognition.

Academic background

Nancy Kanwisher received her BS in biology from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

in 1980 and her PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT in 1986. After obtaining her PhD working with Mary C. Potter, she then did her post-doctoral work with Anne Treisman at UC-Berkeley. Before returning to MIT as a faculty member in 1997 in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Kanwisher served as a faculty member at both

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. Kanwisher is a member and associate editor for journals in areas of cognitive science, including

Cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Journal of Neuroscience,

Trends in Cognitive Sciences ''Trends in Cognitive Sciences'' (''TiCS'') is a monthly peer-reviewed review journal published by Cell Press. It is one of 14 journals in the '' Trends'' series. its editor is Lindsey Drayton. ''Journal Citation Reports'' (Thomson Reuters) lists ...

, and Cognitive Neuropsychology. She has also written on other subjects, including an article in the

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...

and

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...

in 2010 about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kanwisher once shaved her head while teaching a lecture on neuroanatomy to point out the functional regions of the brain so her students could visualize the concepts.

Achievements and awards

Kanwisher has received several accolades for her academic endeavors. She was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award in 1999, awarded for achievement in investigations regarding relationships of consciousness and the physical world. She received the MacVicar Faculty Fellow Award in 2002 and the 2016

National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award is a research initiative first announced in 2004 designed to support individual scientists' biomedical research. The focus is specifically on "pioneering" research that is highly innovative ...

. In January 2021, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

, England. In 2002, she won the NAS Award in the Neurosciences. In 2023, she won the Jean Nicod Prize. In 2024, Kanwisher was one of three recipients of the

Kavli Prize The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation (United States), Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and r ...

in neuroscience "for the discovery of a highly localized and specialized system for representation of faces in human and non-human primate neocortex". Also in 2024, she was awarded the Rosenstiel Award of the Brandeis University. Kanwisher founded the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She serves as a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(since 2005),

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

(since 2009), and received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in Peace and International Security (1986). In July 2017, Kanwisher was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, and serves as a public policy advisors, research ...

for the humanities and social sciences.

Research

Kanwisher has training in

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...

, which is investigating how the mind works by observing its outward behavior. She is credited with co-discovering and characterizing the

fusiform face area The fusiform face area (FFA, meaning spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system (while also activated in people blind from birth) that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex (I ...

(FFA) in the human brain, a region whose function appears to be the recognition of fine distinctions between well-known objects and, in particular, faces. She also co-discovered the

parahippocampal place area The parahippocampal gyrus (or hippocampal gyrus') is a grey matter cortical region, a gyrus of the brain that surrounds the hippocampus and is part of the limbic system. The region plays an important role in memory encoding and retrieval. It ha ...

(PPA), a region of the brain that recognizes environmental scenes. These two discoveries are now widely discussed in the cognitive field and provide a gold standard for clarity in search for primitives of human cognition. In her research, she uses functional MRI, behavioral methods, and

transcranial magnetic stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive neurostimulation technique in which a changing magnetic field is used to induce an electric current in a targeted area of the brain through electromagnetic induction. A device called a st ...

. She also uses ECOG to study audition, language processing, and social perception. She gave a 2014 TED Talk entitled "A Neural Portrait of the Human Mind".

References

External links

Kanwisher Lab

Nancy's Brain Talks

Election to National Academy of Sciences

Troland Research Award
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanwisher, Nancy American women neuroscientists American cognitive neuroscientists Memory researchers Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists Harvard University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences University of California, Los Angeles faculty Living people Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Corresponding fellows of the British Academy Neuroimaging researchers American women academics 21st-century American women scientists 1958 births Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni