This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Olga, and this is Clear In vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

We go around and do stuff in the world. We don't just look at a person and say,

oh, that's Alan's face. That's it. End of story. We say, okay, there's Alan's face.

You know, what should I say to him? What is he thinking now? What am I going to say next?

Where did I see him last? All of those things require other brain regions. So these,

all of these regions need to be interacting with, talking to each other,

sharing information. How information moves around in the brain from one region to the next

is something I am deeply interested in. What shunts it in one direction rather than another direction.

I think that would be really cool. That's Nancy Canwisher. She's a neuroscientist who

discovered a part of the brain that I personally have a little problem with. The part that allows us

to recognize faces. So I was eager to catch up with her on her latest research, which turns out

to be all about the theme of clear and vivid, connecting and communicating. How different areas of

the brain, each specializing in different tasks, talk to each other. This is going to be great talking

with you because what you do is so fascinating in itself, finding specialized areas of the brain.

I know what you mean. Isn't that something? I pinch myself every day. How do I get to do this?

These parts of the brain that are dedicated to certain tasks and apparently only those tasks.

Yes, it's pretty amazing. I like it because I feel like we're looking at the brain to get a kind of

rough sketch of the mind. Who we are? How cool is that?

So the thing that I am especially interested in your special areas is that you figured out

the special area devoted to recognizing faces. And that's my problem is I have face blindness.

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