She studies brains; takes stands, too
So you say you never forget a face. It's Nancy Kanwisher's goal to figure out why.
A professor in the brain and cognitive sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kanwisher uses sophisticated medical snapshots to peer into the human brain and reveal its secrets. Specifically, she examines regions of the brain devoted to recognizing faces, places, and body parts.
When she began her cerebral expeditions two decades ago, specialists in her field didn't have easy access to brain scanning machinery.
''We used to be able to study the mind by looking at behavior and how it breaks down in cases of brain damage," said Kanwisher. ''Now you can look smack into the workings of the machine."
A psychologist by training, Kanwisher, 47, was recently elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. She describes her work as asking ''psychological questions by looking at the brain, by looking at the meat that does the thinking."
She's especially interested in how the mind is organized, and she is hunting for regions of the brain devoted to relatively newer, uniquely human skills, such as reading, to see whether there are cases in which the brain is molded by experience rather than genes. Today that search is conducted with the aid of scanners called functional magnetic resonance imaging machines that can observe the brain as it works. They're ubiquitous now, but when she began her research in the 1980s, scientists in her field struggled to gain access to the equipment, which was then largely the province of doctors.
''Doctors aren't scientists, and the people who had interesting questions were psychologists," Kanwisher said. ''Doctors aren't impressed by psychologists, and so the people who had the good questions didn't have access. That was the first 10 years."
That obstacle may explain why she's now so outspoken about brain-scan research that produces what she considers useless or misleading results.
''I think there's a lot of, 'Now I have a $3 million machine, I don't have to think anymore,' " Kanwisher said.
''My feeling is that if you are working with a $3 million machine, you have to think a little harder than if you were doing a $10 behavioral experiment."
But Kanwisher, also an investigator at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is known for being critical about more than brain research.
She led a campaign against the US invasion of Iraq in which 13,000 professors signed a petition opposing the war and raised $30,000 to purchase an ad in The New York Times to air their views.
A year earlier, she drew criticism and controversy by organizing an online petition that called for MIT and Harvard University to divest their investments in Israel in opposition to the country's military action in the Palestinian territories.
Because her time is finite and the number of worthy causes infinite, Kanwisher said, she targets her political action in areas she believes the United States is directly responsible.
''Mostly I am a narrow-minded scientist, but every once in a while I can't stand it anymore and I pay attention to something outside of my lab and I mouth off," she said.
She doesn't see a connection between her science and politics but says her secure status as a tenured faculty member at MIT obligates her to speak out about politics.
''There are few more privileged positions than a tenured faculty member," Kanwisher said. ''The whole point of tenure is that when you have something important to say, then you say it."
Early in her career, Kanwisher's passion for politics competed with her interest in science. During graduate school at MIT, she took time off to explore whether she could become a political journalist. She flew to Managua at the height of the Contra war to test her skills at reporting. She was never able to publish the stories.
She asked her journalism mentor later what the chances were of ending up penniless if she did everything right in pursuing her ambitions as an investigative journalist.
''He said, 'Oh excellent. It happens all the time,' " said Kanwisher. ''That's why I went back to science."
Hometown: Woods Hole, Mass.
Hobbies: Travel. Over the past two-and-a-half years alone, she's been to Iran, Nepal, Tibet, Indonesia, Panama, Mexico, France, and China.
Favorite travel destination: Iran. Several years ago she gave a series of talks to a group of neuroscientists in Tehran at the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Math. ''Five minutes into my first lecture they were asking me all these amazing questions -- completely on the ball, very self-educated, but very wonderful."
Formative experience: When she was 15, she jumped off a friend's shoulders on the beach and broke her neck. For several weeks it was unclear whether she'd ever walk again. Recovery was an extended process, which involved wearing a fiberglass body cast for a summer, and then surgery. ''It was a slow, painful recovery. It made me what I am."
Scientific question she'd most like to answer: What is the organization of the mind? Why does the brain have specific areas for certain functions, such as recognizing faces and places, but not for others, such as identifying cars and trees? Why isn't the brain a general purpose machine for all uses?
To hear her: Kanwisher will host the next MIT Museum Soap Box, a salon-style conversation that is free and open to the public, on Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the museum, 265 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Call 617-253-4444 or go to web.mit.edu/museum for more information.
