Isabel Gauthier is a cognitive neuroscientist currently holding the position of David K. Wilson Professor of Psychology and head of the Object Perception Lab at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology. In 2000, with the support of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, she founded the Perceptual Expertise Network (PEN), which now comprises over ten labs based across North America. In 2006 PEN became part of the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC).
Gauthier was born in Montreal, Québec, Canada, in 1971. She acquired her PhD at Yale University (1993-1998). Her dissertation Dissecting face recognition: The role of expertise and level of categorization in object recognition was conducted under the supervision of Michael J, Tarr. She held post-doctoral positions at Yale and MIT before joining the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1999.
Gauthier has received the Young Investigator Award, Cognitive Neuroscience Society (2002), the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Behavioral/Cognitive Neuroscience (2003) and the Troland research award from the National Academy of Sciences "For seminal experiments on the role of visual expertise in the recognition of complex objects including faces and for exploration of brain areas activated by this recognition." (2008). She was elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (2010). In 2012, Gauthier was elected Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2015, she was named "SEC professor of the year" by the Southeastern Conference. In 2021 Gauthier received the Psychonomic Society Mid-Career award.
Gauthier has researched many topics involved in perception, with a focus on the role of perceptual expertise in category-specific effects in domains such as faces, letters or musical notation. She incorporates different techniques to study these topics, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERP), and behavioral training studies using novel objects (e.g. Greebles). One brain area frequently investigated by Gauthier and colleagues using fMRI is the fusiform face area (FFA). The FFA is believed to play an important role in face recognition, but Gauthier’s research has examined the role that FFA may play in the expert perception of non-face objects, such as cars in car experts.