Doris Tsao, professor of neuroscience and Pivotal Life Sciences Faculty Scholar, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This honor recognizes accomplished individuals from across a wide variety of fields, and engages them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the U.S. 252 people were elected this year, including seven from UC Berkeley.
Tsao is known for brain-mapping studies in the macaque, a primate, that led to the discovery of six “face patch” regions of the inferotemporal cortex that are activated more strongly when the animals are shown pictures of both human and monkey faces. She and her colleagues found a simple code that allowed them to reconstruct in detail a face shown to a monkey simply from the electrical activity in a few hundred neurons. They also discovered the unique code the brain uses to encode familiar faces, providing new insight into how the cortex encodes memories. Tsao is now addressing a broader question: how the brain represents the entire 3D space around us.
Read more about the seven UC Berkeley faculty newly elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
