On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti Brainwaves: Why is the brain such a mystery?
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Feb 9, 2026 Nancy Kanwisher, MIT cognitive neuroscience professor known for work on face recognition and language regions. She traces brain anatomy and the hunt for organizing principles. Stories about localized deficits like prosopagnosia meet the fMRI revolution and the discovery of the fusiform face area. AI models and future human recording tools are discussed.
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Three-Layer Functional View Of The Brain
- The brain can be usefully described in layers: subcortical nuclei, white-matter wiring, and the cortex where most higher cognition occurs.
- Researchers seek regularities across neurons to explain computation without describing each neuron individually.
Friend’s Hidden Brain Tumor Revealed
- Nancy Canwisher recounts driving her friend Bob to the ER after he collapsed and discovering a slow-growing meningioma.
- The tumor explained his progressive navigation loss despite intact high-level job performance and was removed with an 11-hour surgery.
Specific Deficits Reveal Brain Modularity
- Studying people with specific brain damage reveals modular functions, like prosopagnosia for face recognition.
- Specific brain regions can perform very narrow tasks while the whole process still recruits many regions.
