The Mind's Eye: Technology Day Gets Inside the Brain

Wonder about the latest research on how the brain works? You can tune in now to the June 6 Web stream of Technology Day, the intellectual centerpiece of Tech Reunions 2009. After remarks by President Susan Hockfield, three MIT faculty share their research from 9 a.m. until 12:45 p.m. EDT.

How the Brain Invents the Mind—Rebecca Saxe PhD ’03, Cognitive Neuroscience

When you look at other people, the features visible on the outside are only a small part of what you perceive. Many people are much more interested in seeing, or inferring, what's going on inside: other people's thoughts, beliefs and desires. How does the brain—an electrical and biological machine—construct abstract thoughts?

Learning to See—Pawan Sinha ’92, PhD ’95, Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Humans see a world that makes sense. Parsing the complex visual array into meaningful objects comes so naturally that people often do not think of how amazing an accomplishment this is. Indeed, no computer system even comes close to this level of proficiency. How do people acquire these impressive visual skills?

Computers with Commonsense—Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

About 50 years ago, students in artificial intelligence laboratories began to write programs exhibiting useful and impressive expert behavior, but from the perspective of commonsense, all computers remain as stupid as stones. Can researchers ever understand what happened in human evolution well enough to build a truly intelligent machine?