307: Rebecca Schwarzlose | The Maps Inside Our Mind Detailed In “Brainscapes”

Are there detailed maps of representations of sights, sounds, and action held in our brain? Postdoctoral scholar Rebecca Schwarlose joins us to discuss this topic and more from her latest book Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain―And How They Guide You.

Rebecca Schwarzlose is a neuroscientist at Washington University in Saint Louis. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT and has served as chief editor of the scholarly journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Rebecca’s research investigates how minds and brains conceptualize complex natural phenomena and generate a mental inventory of meaningful objects, actions, and social groups. Her doctoral research focused on the neural representation of crucial object categories such as human faces and bodies and the overarching organization of category information in the brain.  Her current research investigates the neural bases for atypical sensory processing and prediction in childhood and their relations to psychopathology.

Brainscapes was supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology.