This year’s Public Lecture will be delivered by Nancy Kanwisher, a faculty member in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT. The Lecture will be held at the beautiful Museum of Fine Arts, on Saturday, May 20, 2017. Nancy’s talk, “Functional Imaging of the Human Brain as a Window into the Mind” is open to the public and included in the price of museum admission.
Though intended for the public, VSS attendees may attend the Public Lecture.
The museum has graciously offered VSS attendees free admission to the Museum during the meeting dates of May 19 – 24, 2017. For museum entry, simply show your meeting badge.
Functional Imaging of the Human Brain as a Window into the Mind
Saturday, May 20, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida
Twenty-five years ago with the invention fMRI it became possible to image neural activity in the normal human brain. This remarkable tool has given us a striking new picture of the human brain, in which many regions have been shown to carry out highly specific mental functions, like the perception of faces, speech sounds, and music, and even very abstract mental functions like understanding a sentence or thinking about another person’s thoughts. These discoveries show that human minds and brains are not single general-purpose devices, but are instead made up of numerous distinct processors, each carrying out different functions. I’ll discuss some of the evidence for highly specialized brain regions, and what we know about each. I’ll also consider the tantalizing unanswered questions we are trying to tackle now: What other specialized brain regions do we have? What are the connections between these each of these specialized regions and the rest of the brain? How do these regions develop over infancy and childhood? How do these regions work together to produce uniquely human intelligence?
Attending the Public Lecture
The lecture is free to the public with admission to the museum. Museum members are free; Adults $17; Seniors 65 and older $15; Military with Id $15; College Students $10; Students 7-18 $10; Children 6 and under are free. VSS attendees will receive free admission to the Museum by showing your meeting badge.
About the VSS Public Lecture
The annual public lecture represents the mission and commitment of the Vision Sciences Society to promote progress in understanding vision, and its relation to cognition, action and the brain. Education is basic to our science, and as scientists we are obliged to communicate the results of our work, not only to our professional colleagues but to the broader public. This lecture is part of our effort to give back to the community that supports us.