Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research Interests
It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
– Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
My research interests include explaining the miraculous and understanding the unusual.
Recent Publications
- Barenholtz E, Tarr MJ: Figure–ground assignment to a translating contour: A preference for advancing vs. Receding motion. J Vis 9(5:27): 1-9, 2009.
- Lebrecht S, Pierce LJ, Tarr MJ, Tanaka JW: Perceptual other-race training reduces implicit racial bias. PLoS One 4(1): 1-7, 2009.
- Vettell JM, Nestor A, Bird CW, Heller LM, Curran T, Tarr, MJ: Investigating the interplay of time & semantics during multimodal integration. In The 10th International Multimodal Research Forum. New York, NY, 2009.
- Nestor A, Tarr MJ: Gender recognition of human faces using color. Psychol Sci 19(12): 1242-1246, 2008.
- Nestor A, Vettel JM, Tarr MJ: Task-Specific codes for face recognition: How they shape the neural representation of features for detection and individuation. PLoS One 3(12): 2008.
- Barenholtz E, Tarr MJ: Reconsidering the role of structure in vision. In A. Markman, & B. Ross (Eds.), Categories in use. (pp. 157-80). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2007.
- Kung C, Peissig JJ, Tarr MJ: Is region-of-interest overlap comparison a reliable measure of category specificity?. J Cogn Neurosci 19(12): 2019-2034, 2007.
