Distinguished Professor Bruce L. McNaughton (Neurobiology and Behavior) was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) award and named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.  An appointment to the Royal Society of Canada is the highest honor a scholar can achieve in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences in Canada, while the NSF award was given as part of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative and will allow Professor McNaughton and his collaborators to determine the mechanisms that transform short-term/transient memories into more permanent long-term memories.

Professor McNaughton’s research focus is on the physiological and computational basis of cognition.  His work has helped shape the way the world thinks about neurophysiology, particularly synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation.  In addition to his ground-breaking research, Professor McNaughton is also the creator of a widely used method to simultaneous record from a large number of single brain cells in conscious animals.  Professor McNaughton’s contributions to the understanding of spatial cognition have also played an important role in the foundation work that led to the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.