Clark Fisher

Presented by Winrich Freiwald

A.B., Princeton University

Effect of Temporal and Spatial Context within the Macaque Face-Processing System

Social life relies on faces. A day like today—when lots of people come together all wearing pretty much the same outfit—would be unthinkable if we could not tell one facefrom another.

To most of us, face recognition comes easily. But that experience belies the daunting computational challenges our brains must solve to make that happen. To do so, evolution has equipped us with a network of areas devoted to the task of face recognition and face recognition only, each area solving a different computational problem.

When Clark Fisher joined my lab, he came with a background in biochemistry and neuroscience from Princeton and experience with the retina, the part of the brain in the back of our eyes that implements the very first steps of vision. To make his transition easier, I thought it would be best for him to work on the earliest parts of the face-processing network. But Clark had other, better ideas and set out on a scientific journey that took him to uncharted territory.

You see, there are faces out there that are actually not really faces. Take the faces of dolls—they look real, but you know they are not alive, they don’t belong to a real person. Clark discovered a new brain region that is exquisitely sensitive to the natural motion of faces, a quality like no other to give away the reality of another person. Clark also discovered where and how face-representations are enhanced when the face is seen on top of a body—and why the converse is not the case. Both discoveries mark a critical transition from the analysis of a face as a shape to the recognition of a face as that of a real person.

There are lots of things I admire about Clark. He is an excellent scientist. He is also a natural teacher—most avidly, he has been teaching at our student and faculty club, where his infinite knowledge of matters big and small earned my lab the title “super nerds,” something I am immensely proud of. And Clark is a physician in the making. When he told me that after his Ph.D. he saw his future in medicine, it was one of those moments when everything makes sense. The doctor I would want at my bedside—that would be him.