Rebecca Saxe: Fine Tuning the Theory of Mind

One day last November, as she does several times a week, cognitive scientist Rebecca Saxe gave a lecture about the brain. This time, her audience was not other scientists or philosophers or undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but the 80-odd honorable members of the Rhode Island judiciary.Saxe packed her talk with "super-cool things about the brain," she recalls. She told the judges how the brain folds precisely the same way in every human; and how most of the stuff inside of our brains is not the brain cells, called gray matter, but the connections between the cells, or white matter.Saxe, 29, is not much taller than 5 feet. Exceedingly unpretentious and usually shy, she becomes quite animated when she delves into the mysteries of the human brain. Alas, the judges did not share her enthusiasm. "Their reaction was, 'Mmm, that's nice,'" she recalls with a laugh. "I just totally miscalled it.”The incident is rendered ironic by Saxeʼs research focus: the ability to divine what others are thinking.Read more at...SFARI, January 2009.

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