Skip Navigation Print This Page Share this page: More  David
Foster  David Foster  David Foster of Neuroscience His interests
in the brain and mind go way back:  You've used an animal model
to study spatial learning by asking what goes on in the animal's
brain as it learns to navigate a new environment. Do you
yourself have an especially good sense of direction?  FOSTER: I
have to be honest: I'm terrible at spatial memory. I'm the last
person you'd want to be with in a new city.  So it wasn't your
personal skill at these tasks that sparked your interest in this
field. What did? When did your interest in neuroscience begin?
FOSTER: As a child I'd been really interested in philosophy,
questions about the nature of mind. Do we construct the world
entirely out of experiences we've had "learning everything from
scratch" or do we come preconfigured with internal models of the
world?  This is an ancient question. For example, Plato said
that our perception of reality only dimly reflects the ideal
forms of things, a