Doris Tsao

Last updated
Doris Tsao
Doris Tsao.jpg
Born
Changzhou, China
Citizenship American
Alma mater California Institute of Technology (BS)
Harvard University (PhD)
Known for Face perception
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Visual perception
Institutions University of California, Berkeley
Thesis Stereopsis  (2002)
Doctoral advisor Margaret Livingstone

Doris Ying Tsao is an American neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology and molecular cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology for 12 years. [2] She is recognized for pioneering the use of fMRI with single-unit electrophysiological recordings and for discovering the macaque face patch system for face perception. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the director of the T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience. [3] She won a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship in 2018. [4] Tsao was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. [5] In 2024 she was awarded a Kavli Prize in neuroscience along with Nancy Kanwisher and Winrich Freiwald for the discovery and study of specific areas in the brain that perform facial recognition. [6] Also in 2024 she received the Rosenstiel Award. [7] After joining UC Berkeley in 2021, her current research [8] explores visual perception in primates in order to understand how the brain creates our sense of reality.

Contents

Early life and education

Tsao was born in Changzhou, China before her family immigrated to the United States when she was four. [9] She grew up in College Park, Maryland and attended Springbrook High School. [10] Her interest in science and in visual neuroscience in particular was inspired by the Feynman Lectures and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. [11] She completed her B.S. in biology and mathematics in just three years at Caltech in 1996. [12] She then worked with Margaret Livingstone at the Harvard Medical School, where she received her PhD in neuroscience in 2002 and continued to work as a postdoctoral fellow. [12] In 2004 she received the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award from the Humboldt Foundation, which allowed her to start her own independent research group at the University of Bremen in Germany from 2004 to 2008. [13] In 2009 she joined the faculty at Caltech to teach biology, where she also became a Leadership Chair of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience. [14] [15] She went on to join the Allen Institute for Brain Science symposium in 2010. [16]

Career and research

As a PhD student working with Margaret Livingstone, Tsao began by studying stereopsis in macaques using single-unit electrophysiological recordings. She then became interested in using fMRI, a technique usually used to visualize the activity of brain areas in humans, to image brain regions in macaques. She collaborated with Roger Tootell to use fMRI to image brain regions involved in depth perception, and then collaborated with Winrich Freiwald, a postdoctoral fellow working with Nancy Kanwisher at MIT, to combine single-unit electrophysiology with fMRI to study face perception in macaques. [13] Similar to the fusiform face area identified in humans with, they discovered a series of small brain areas, referred to as the macaque face patch system, [17] that contain neurons which are selectively activated by faces. [18] [19] [20] Tsao and her lab have continued to make significant advances in understanding the specific facial features that cause neurons in these face patches to be activated. [21] In 2017, her lab "cracked the code" of how our brains recognize faces, [22] identifying the feature dimensions that cause face-selective neurons in different face patches of the IT cortex to respond to faces. Thus, the images of faces presented to the monkeys could be precisely reconstructed from face-selective neurons' activity. [23]

Tsao was named in MIT Technology Review's TR35 list in 2007. [24] She is serving on the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (BRAIN Initiative Working Group 2.0) established in 2018, the group that advises on allocation of $1.511 billion toward neuroscience research. [25]

Publications

Doris Tsao has authored or co-authored numerous influential publications in the field of neuroscience, particularly in the areas of visual perception and the neural basis of cognition. Among Dr. Doris Tsao's extensive body of work, [26] several publications have garnered significant attention and acclaim within the field of neuroscience.

Her landmark paper, A cortical region consisting entirely of face-selective cells, [27] published in Science (journal) in 2006, revealed the existence of specialized brain regions dedicated to processing faces. Tsao and her colleagues identified "face patches" in the brains of macaque monkeys, providing crucial insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the facial recognition system. Functional compartmentalization and viewpoint generalization within the macaque face-processing system, [28] published in Science (journal) in 2008, provides insights into the organization and function of the face-processing system in the macaque brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they identify specialized regions in the inferior temporal cortex that respond strongly to faces. Within these regions, they discover functional compartmentalization, with different sub-regions specialized in processing specific facial features like identity or expression. Another notable contribution published in Nature Neuroscience in 2009 was her paper on Faces and objects in macaque cerebral cortex, [29] where Tsao and her team further explored the organization of face-selective cells in the macaque cortex, shedding light on the distinction between processing faces and other objects.

These publications represent just a fraction of Tsao's extensive body of work, which has significantly advanced our understanding of the neural basis of visual perception and cognition.

Other popular publications:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual cortex</span> Region of the brain that processes visual information

The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus and then reaches the visual cortex. The area of the visual cortex that receives the sensory input from the lateral geniculate nucleus is the primary visual cortex, also known as visual area 1 (V1), Brodmann area 17, or the striate cortex. The extrastriate areas consist of visual areas 2, 3, 4, and 5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Color constancy</span> How humans perceive color

Color constancy is an example of subjective constancy and a feature of the human color perception system which ensures that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. A green apple for instance looks green to us at midday, when the main illumination is white sunlight, and also at sunset, when the main illumination is red. This helps us identify objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual system</span> Body parts responsible for vision

The visual system is the physiological basis of visual perception. The system detects, transduces and interprets information concerning light within the visible range to construct an image and build a mental model of the surrounding environment. The visual system is associated with the eye and functionally divided into the optical system and the neural system.

Margaret Stratford Livingstone is the Takeda Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School in the field of visual perception. She authored the book Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temporal lobe</span> One of the four lobes of the mammalian brain

The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face perception</span> Cognitive process of visually interpreting the human face

Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other species, this article focuses on facial perception in humans.

The grandmother cell, sometimes called the "Jennifer Aniston neuron", is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object. It activates when a person "sees, hears, or otherwise sensibly discriminates" a specific entity, such as their grandmother. It contrasts with the concept of ensemble coding, where the unique set of features characterizing the grandmother is detected as a particular activation pattern across an ensemble of neurons, rather than being detected by a specific "grandmother cell".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inferior temporal gyrus</span> One of three gyri of the temporal lobe of the brain

The inferior temporal gyrus is one of three gyri of the temporal lobe and is located below the middle temporal gyrus, connected behind with the inferior occipital gyrus; it also extends around the infero-lateral border on to the inferior surface of the temporal lobe, where it is limited by the inferior sulcus. This region is one of the higher levels of the ventral stream of visual processing, associated with the representation of objects, places, faces, and colors. It may also be involved in face perception, and in the recognition of numbers and words.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colour centre</span> Brain region responsible for colour processing

The colour centre is a region in the brain primarily responsible for visual perception and cortical processing of colour signals received by the eye, which ultimately results in colour vision. The colour centre in humans is thought to be located in the ventral occipital lobe as part of the visual system, in addition to other areas responsible for recognizing and processing specific visual stimuli, such as faces, words, and objects. Many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in both humans and macaque monkeys have shown colour stimuli to activate multiple areas in the brain, including the fusiform gyrus and the lingual gyrus. These areas, as well as others identified as having a role in colour vision processing, are collectively labelled visual area 4 (V4). The exact mechanisms, location, and function of V4 are still being investigated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fusiform face area</span> Part of the human visual system that is specialized for facial recognition

The fusiform face area is a part of the human visual system that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex (IT), in the fusiform gyrus.

In cognitive neuroscience, visual modularity is an organizational concept concerning how vision works. The way in which the primate visual system operates is currently under intense scientific scrutiny. One dominant thesis is that different properties of the visual world require different computational solutions which are implemented in anatomically/functionally distinct regions that operate independently – that is, in a modular fashion.

Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision, color vision, scotopic vision, and mesopic vision, using light in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision.

Globs are millimeter-sized color modules found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's color processing ventral pathway. They are scattered throughout the posterior inferior temporal cortex in an area called the V4 complex. They are clustered by color preference, and organized as color columns. They are the first part of the brain in which color is processed in terms of the full range of hues found in color space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parasol cell</span>

A parasol cell, sometimes called an M cell or M ganglion cell, is one type of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) located in the ganglion cell layer of the retina. These cells project to magnocellular cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) as part of the magnocellular pathway in the visual system. They have large cell bodies as well as extensive branching dendrite networks and as such have large receptive fields. Relative to other RGCs, they have fast conduction velocities. While they do show clear center-surround antagonism, they receive no information about color. Parasol ganglion cells contribute information about the motion and depth of objects to the visual system.

Bevil Conway, is a Zimbabwean neuroscientist, visual artist, and an expert in color. Conway specialises in visual perception in his scientific work, and he often explores the limitations of the visual system in his artwork. At Wellesley College, Conway was Knafel Assistant Professor of Natural Science from 2007 to 2011, and associate professor of Neuroscience until 2016. He was a founding member of the Neuroscience Department at Wellesley. Prior to joining the Wellesley faculty, Conway helped establish the Kathmandu University Medical School in Nepal, where he taught as assistant professor in 2002–03. He currently runs the Sensation, Cognition and Action Unit in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Richard Alan Andersen is an American neuroscientist. He is the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. His research focuses on visual physiology with an emphasis on translational research to humans in the field of neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and cortical repair.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award is awarded by The American Philosophical Society as a recognition of research on the integrative neuroscience of behavior. The award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Karl Spencer Lashley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School</span> Academic Department at Harvard University Medical School, USA

The Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, MA. The Department is part of the Basic Research Program at Harvard Medical School, with research pertaining to development of the nervous system, sensory neuroscience, neurophysiology, and behavior. The Department was founded by Stephen W. Kuffler in 1966, the first department dedicated to Neurobiology in the world. The mission of the Department is “to understand the workings of the brain through basic research and to use that knowledge to work toward preventive and therapeutic methods that alleviate neurological diseases”.

Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.

The occipital face area (OFA) is a region of the human cerebral cortex which is specialised for face perception. The OFA is located on the lateral surface of the occipital lobe adjacent to the inferior occipital gyrus. The OFA comprises a network of brain regions including the fusiform face area (FFA) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) which support facial processing.

References

  1. ↑ "Global Award - Eppendorf Corporate".
  2. ↑ "Doris Tsao Simons Foundation". www.simonsfoundation.org/people/doris-tsao/. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  3. ↑ Svitil, Kathy (6 December 2016). "Caltech and the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute Launch Major Neuroscience Initiative". California Institute of Technology.
  4. ↑ Healy, Melissa (October 4, 2018). "How does the brain see? MacArthur fellow Doris Tsao says the answer will reveal how the brain works". Los Angeles Times .
  5. ↑ "2020 NAS Election".
  6. ↑ "UC Berkeley Neuroscientist and Nanoscientist Among This Year's Kavli Prize Winners | Research UC Berkeley". vcresearch.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
  7. ↑ Rosenstiel Award 2024
  8. ↑ "Doris Y. Tsao ResearchGate". www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Doris-Y-Tsao-40028808. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  9. ↑ "Doris Tsao – tsaolab". www.tsaolab.caltech.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-09-08. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
  10. ↑ "National Merit Semifinalists". Washington Post. 24 September 1992.
  11. ↑ "Doris Tsao". Tsao Lab. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  12. 1 2 Tsao, Doris (2006-10-06). "Eppendorf 2006 Grand Prize Winner". Science. 314 (5796): 72–73. doi:10.1126/science.314.5796.73. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   17023645.
  13. 1 2 "Doris Tsao - Class of 2018". www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2018/doris-tsao. 2024-06-06.
  14. ↑ "Tsao Lab". tsaolab.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  15. ↑ "Doris Tsao - Simons Foundation". Simons Foundation. 14 October 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
  16. ↑ "Doris Tsao: 2010 Allen Institute for Brain Science Symposium". www.frontiersin.org/video/Doris_Tsao_2010_Allen_Institute_for_Brain_Science_Symposium/1173. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  17. ↑ TEDx Talks (2013-02-01), You Look Familiar: Unearthing the Face Within: Doris Tsao at TEDxCaltech , retrieved 2017-06-06
  18. ↑ "2014: Tsao". The Golden Brains. Minerva Foundation. November 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
  19. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Knutsen, Tamara A.; Mandeville, Joseph B.; Tootell, Roger B. H. (September 2003). "Faces and objects in macaque cerebral cortex". Nature Neuroscience. 6 (9): 989–995. doi:10.1038/nn1111. ISSN   1097-6256. PMC   8117179 . PMID   12925854. S2CID   549696.
  20. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tootell, Roger B. H.; Livingstone, Margaret S. (2006-02-03). "A Cortical Region Consisting Entirely of Face-Selective Cells". Science. 311 (5761): 670–674. Bibcode:2006Sci...311..670T. doi:10.1126/science.1119983. ISSN   0036-8075. PMC   2678572 . PMID   16456083.
  21. ↑ "Doris Tsao - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
  22. ↑ Sheikh, Knvul. "How We Save Face--Researchers Crack the Brain's Facial-Recognition Code". Scientific American. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
  23. ↑ Chang, Le; Tsao, Doris Y. (2017-06-01). "The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain". Cell. 169 (6): 1013–1028.e14. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.011 . ISSN   0092-8674. PMC   8088389 . PMID   28575666.
  24. ↑ Singer, Emily (2007). "Innovator Under 35: Doris Tsao, 31". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 29 April 2016. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
  25. ↑ "Advisory Committee to the NIH Director - Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) - National Institutes of Health (NIH)". www.braininitiative.nih.gov. Retrieved 2018-04-27.
  26. ↑ "Doris Tsao on Research.com". research.com/u/doris-y-tsao. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  27. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tootell, Roger B. H.; Livingstone, Margaret S. (3 February 2006). "A cortical region consisting entirely of face-selective cells". Science. 311 (5761): 670–674. Bibcode:2006Sci...311..670T. doi:10.1126/science.1119983. ISSN   1095-9203. PMC   2678572 . PMID   16456083.
  28. ↑ Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tsao, Doris Y. (5 November 2010). "Functional compartmentalization and viewpoint generalization within the macaque face-processing system". Science. 330 (6005): 845–851. Bibcode:2010Sci...330..845F. doi:10.1126/science.1194908. ISSN   1095-9203. PMC   3181095 . PMID   21051642.
  29. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Knutsen, Tamara A.; Mandeville, Joseph B.; Tootell, Roger B. H. (September 2003). "Faces and objects in macaque cerebral cortex". Nature Neuroscience. 6 (9): 989–995. doi:10.1038/nn1111. ISSN   1097-6256. PMC   8117179 . PMID   12925854.
  30. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Livingstone, Margaret S. (2008). "Mechanisms of face perception". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 31: 411–437. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.30.051606.094238. ISSN   0147-006X. PMC   2629401 . PMID   18558862.
  31. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Moeller, Sebastian; Freiwald, Winrich A. (9 December 2008). "Comparing face patch systems in macaques and humans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 105 (49): 19514–19519. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10519514T. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0809662105 . ISSN   1091-6490. PMC   2614792 . PMID   19033466.
  32. ↑ Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tsao, Doris Y.; Livingstone, Margaret S. (September 2009). "A face feature space in the macaque temporal lobe". Nature Neuroscience. 12 (9): 1187–1196. doi:10.1038/nn.2363. ISSN   1546-1726. PMC   2819705 . PMID   19668199.
  33. ↑ Chang, Le; Tsao, Doris Y. (1 June 2017). "The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain". Cell. 169 (6): 1013–1028.e14. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.011. ISSN   1097-4172. PMC   8088389 . PMID   28575666.
  34. ↑ Moeller, Sebastian; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tsao, Doris Y. (6 June 2008). "Patches with links: a unified system for processing faces in the macaque temporal lobe". Science. 320 (5881): 1355–1359. Bibcode:2008Sci...320.1355M. doi:10.1126/science.1157436. ISSN   1095-9203. PMC   8344042 . PMID   18535247.
  35. ↑ Alivisatos, A. Paul; Andrews, Anne M.; Boyden, Edward S.; Chun, Miyoung; Church, George M.; Deisseroth, Karl; Donoghue, John P.; Fraser, Scott E.; Lippincott-Schwartz, Jennifer; Looger, Loren L.; Masmanidis, Sotiris; McEuen, Paul L.; Nurmikko, Arto V.; Park, Hongkun; Peterka, Darcy S.; Reid, Clay; Roukes, Michael L.; Scherer, Axel; Schnitzer, Mark; Sejnowski, Terrence J.; Shepard, Kenneth L.; Tsao, Doris; Turrigiano, Gina; Weiss, Paul S.; Xu, Chris; Yuste, Rafael; Zhuang, Xiaowei (26 March 2013). "Nanotools for neuroscience and brain activity mapping". ACS Nano. 7 (3): 1850–1866. doi:10.1021/nn4012847. ISSN   1936-086X. PMC   3665747 . PMID   23514423.
  36. ↑ Tsao, Doris Y.; Vanduffel, Wim; Sasaki, Yuka; Fize, Denis; Knutsen, Tamara A.; Mandeville, Joseph B.; Wald, Lawrence L.; Dale, Anders M.; Rosen, Bruce R.; Van Essen, David C.; Livingstone, Margaret S.; Orban, Guy A.; Tootell, Roger B. H. (31 July 2003). "Stereopsis activates V3A and caudal intraparietal areas in macaques and humans". Neuron. 39 (3): 555–568. doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(03)00459-8. ISSN   0896-6273. PMID   12895427.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.