Keynote Address/Opening Ceremony
The Specialized Brain
| Chair:
Nancy Kanwisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Is the brain like a Swiss Army knife, composed of specialized mechanisms, each tailored to solve a single specific problem? Or do we have a more general kind of intelligence, ready to confront a broad range of challenges but not specifically tailored to any one in particular? Kanwisher argues that some regions of the brain conduct a single specific high-level cognitive process. She will discuss how much of the brain is like this, why we have specialized regions for some functions but not others, and how this specificity arises in development.
2010 Program Committee
Tyler S. Lorig, Washington and Lee University (Chair); Nalini Ambady, Tufts University; Abigail Baird, Vassar College; Sian Beilock, University of Chicago; Daniel Klein, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Richard Lewis, Pomona College; Kris Preacher, University of Kansas; Deidra Schleicher, Purdue University; Timothy Strauman, Duke University; Tracy Zinn, James Madison University