Penn researcher Danielle Bassett wins a ‘genius grant’

The winners generally have no inkling they are under consideration. The money, doled out over five years, comes with no strings attached.

"I'm still processing that this is actually happening," said Bassett, the youngest of this year's fellows.

Also among the winners are graphic memoirist and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who grew up in Lock Haven; jazz composer and saxophonist Steve Coleman, of Allentown; and University of Pittsburgh writing professor and poet Terrance Hayes. Tara Zahra, a 1998 graduate of Swarthmore College, was honored for her work as a historian of modern Europe.

In a group being honored for creative brains, it makes sense that one, Bassett, studies the very quality that makes brains flexible.

An assistant professor of bioengineering at Penn, she applies a discipline called network science to the study of how we learn. She and colleagues indirectly measure the brain activity of research subjects with a type of MRI machine, monitoring how different regions of the brain interact as people learn.

Those with flexible brains - meaning they are adept at trying various strategies and forging connections - seem to be the best at acquiring new knowledge, she said. This agility can be seen on brain scans as they learn a task such as tapping a sequence of keys on a keyboard, she said.

The daughter of an artist and surgeon, Bassett uses a dance metaphor to describe the phenomenon of watching connections form between regions of the brain, each one 1 to 3 centimeters across.

"You might dance with one partner for a while, and after a while you're going to switch and dance with a different partner," she said. "That's kind of the way brain regions work as well. You can actually watch these switches happen."

People whose brains can make lots of switches seem to be better learners, though the kinds of switches appear as important as the number, she said. The goal is to use the brain scans to identify conditions that would help anyone become a better learner, or aid someone rehabbing from a brain injury, she said.

Bassett grew up in Lock Haven and Reading, the second-oldest of 11 children. The kids were home-schooled by their mother, artist Holly Perry, though Bassett said she got her appreciation of medicine from her father, Reading Hospital orthopedic surgeon John Perry.

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Penn researcher Danielle Bassett wins a 'genius grant'