Isabel Gauthier facts for kids

Isabel Gauthier is a Canadian scientist who studies how our brains see and understand things. She is a professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Psychology. She also leads the Object Perception Lab there.

In 2000, she helped create the Perceptual Expertise Network (PEN). This is a group of over ten labs across North America. They work together to study how people become experts at seeing things. In 2006, this network became part of a bigger learning center.

Amazing Awards and Recognitions

Isabel Gauthier has received many important awards for her work. These awards show how much her research has helped us understand the brain.

Top Honors for Brain Research

In 2002, she won the Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. The next year, in 2003, she received an award from the APA. This award recognized her early contributions to understanding how our brains think and behave.

Recognized for Understanding Vision

In 2008, she received the Troland research award from the National Academy of Sciences. This award was given for her important experiments. These experiments showed how being an expert at seeing things helps us recognize complex objects, like faces. The award also recognized her work on which brain areas are active when we recognize these objects.

She was also chosen as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2010. In 2012, she became a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2015, she was named "SEC professor of the year." More recently, in 2021, she received the Psychonomic Society Mid-Career award.

Leading Scientific Journals

Isabel Gauthier has also been a chief editor for important scientific journals. From 2011, she was the chief editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. She made sure that scientists reported their findings clearly in this journal. Since 2016, she has been the chief editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. She started her second term in this role in 2023.

About Isabel Gauthier

Isabel Gauthier's journey to becoming a leading scientist started with her education.

Her Journey to Becoming a Scientist

She earned her PhD from Yale University between 1993 and 1998. Her main project was about how we recognize faces and other objects. This work was guided by her advisor, Michael J. Tarr.

After her PhD, she worked at Yale and the MIT. These were post-doctoral positions, which are like advanced training for scientists. In 1999, she joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University.

How Our Brains See: Isabel Gauthier's Research

Isabel Gauthier studies how we see and understand the world around us. She focuses on how being an "expert" at seeing certain things changes how our brain works.

Understanding How We Recognize Things

Her research looks at how our brains recognize different types of objects. This includes faces, letters, or even musical notes. She wants to know if our brains use special ways to recognize things we see often. For example, do car experts use the same brain parts to recognize cars as they do to recognize faces?

Brain Areas and Special Objects

One brain area she studies a lot is called the fusiform face area (FFA). Scientists used to think the FFA was only for recognizing faces. But Isabel Gauthier's research shows that the FFA might also be important for recognizing other objects. This happens when someone is an expert at seeing those objects. For example, a car expert might use their FFA to recognize different car models.

Tools for Studying the Brain

To study these topics, she uses different tools and methods.

• functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): This tool lets scientists see which parts of the brain are active when someone is doing a task.
• event-related potentials (ERP): This method measures electrical activity in the brain. It shows how the brain reacts to different events or images.
• Behavioral training studies: She also uses special objects that people learn to recognize. These include made-up objects like Greebles, YUFOs, and Ziggerins. By training people to become "experts" at these new objects, she can see how their brains change.

Her research helps us understand how our brains learn and become better at seeing things.