Rebecca Saxe

Rebecca Saxe is a professor of cognitive neuroscience in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. She is also an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is known for her research on the neural basis of social cognition. She received her BA from Oxford University, and her PhD from MIT. She is the granddaughter of Canadian coroner and politician Morton Shulman.

As a graduate student, Saxe demonstrated that a brain region known as the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is specifically activated by ‘theory of mind’ tasks that require understanding the mental states of other people. She continues to study this brain region, and has recently demonstrated that rTPJ is involved in moral judgments; in a task where subjects hear stories and evaluate the permissibility of the characters’ behavior, disruption of the rTPJ causes subjects to place less weight on the character’s intentions, and greater weight on the actual outcomes of their actions. Individuals with autism show a similar pattern of responses, suggesting a possible role for rTPJ in the etiology of autism.

In addition to her work on theory of mind, Saxe also studies the plasticity of the cortex and the neural substrates of empathy, group conflict and emotion attribution.

Before joining the MIT faculty, Saxe was a junior fellow of Harvard University’s Society of Fellows. In 2008 she was named one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” scientists under 40, and in 2012 the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. Her 2009 TED talk has been viewed 2.8 million times. Saxe was awarded the Troland Research Award by the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

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