I have the privilege to head the Object Perception Lab in the Psychology Department at Vanderbilt University.
I think of myself as a cognitive neuroscientist – I am interested in how we perceive, recognize and categorize objects and shapes (such as faces, letters, cars and novel objects such as Greebles). A lot of the work in our lab revolves around perceptual expertise – defined as becoming very good at making perceptual judgments that started off as being very difficult – and investigates the behavioral and neural changes that occur during its acquisition. Many of our studies investigate individual differences (in vision, haptics and even auditory high-level skills). I got my BA at Université du Québec à Montréal, my PhD at Yale (working with Michael J. Tarr, now at CMU) and did concurrent post docs with John Gore at Yale (now at Vanderbilt) and Nancy Kanwisher at MIT.
My research philosophy includes the belief that dividing the mind and brain into multiple systems to account for differences observed between various categories or tasks is often merely a way of restating the results rather than an explanation. Our work is therefore part of a long tradition influenced by psychologists who prefer to focus on how these differences arise. I also believe in collaboration with people who see the world differently and/or have access to different tools than I do, because ultimately, I do not like my work to be constrained by techniques.

Isabel Gauthier’s CV

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/psychological_sciences/bio/isabel-gauthier

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