Dr. Tedi Asher of the Peabody Essex Museum of Salem, Mass.: “When I first got to PEM,” says Asher, “we knew what the objective was, which was to create more compelling exhibitions for our visitors, by drawing on findings from the neuroscience literature, but we didn’t know exactly how to do that. … I see myself as very much like the mechanic. Like, how do we take all of these parts and work with them in a way that we’re facilitating engagement?”