Academy Member and NYU Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux Receives Lashley Award for His Work on Emotion and Fear
The New York University professor and researcher was recognized for his investigations of fear learning and fear memory
Published May 03, 2011
The American Philosophical Society has awarded New York University's Joseph LeDoux its 2011 Karl Spencer Lashley Award in recognition of his "seminal studies of the neural mechanisms of emotional learning, particularly fear learning and fear memory."
LeDoux has worked on emotion and memory in the brain for more than 20 years. His research, mostly on fear, shows how we can respond to danger before we know what we are responding to. It has also shed light on how emotional memories are formed and stored in the brain. Through this research, LeDoux has mapped the neural circuits underlying fear and fear memory through the brain, and has identified cells, synapses and molecules that make emotional learning and memory possible.
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LeDoux, a long-time member of the New York Academy of Sciences, helped organize NYAS's recent "Music, Science & Medicine" conference. He gave his own talk titled "Fearful Brains in an Anxious World" last year at the Academy, and he was prominently featured in a 2007 Science & the City podcast about consciousness.