Lawrence Weiskrantz | |
---|---|
Born | 28 March 1926 |
Died | 27 January 2018 | (aged 91)
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | Swarthmore College |
Known for | blindsight |
Scientific career | |
Fields | psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience |
Institutions | Oxford University |
Lawrence Weiskrantz FRS (28 March 1926 – 27 January 2018) was a British neuropsychologist. Weiskrantz is credited with discovering the phenomenon of blindsight, and with establishing the role of the amygdala in emotional learning and emotional behavior. [1] Blindsight is when a person with a brain injury causing blindness can nevertheless detect, point accurately at, and discriminate visually presented objects. [2]
Weiskrantz originally attended Girard College, a boarding school in Philadelphia, due in part to the death of his father when he was six. [3] After graduating, he attended Swarthmore College and served in World War II. [3] Shortly before his graduation, he was awarded a Catherwood fellowship at Oxford University. [3]
Weiskrantz became Professor of Psychology at Oxford University where he remained a full professor until retirement in 1993. [3] He then became an emeritus professor of the university and an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College. [3] Weiskrantz had a lifelong interest in the writings and research of the Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, whom he had met and befriended while Luria was still doing research. [4] The two remained colleagues until Luria's death in 1977. [4] In the 1950s Weiskrantz went on to ellucidate the region of the temporal lobe responsible for the erratic emotional behaviors in Klüver-Bucy syndrome, a phenomenon known since the 1930 which came to inspire the limbic brain hypothesis of emotion. [1] Although this hypothesis did not live to its claims, Weiskrantz used instrumental fear conditioning in lesioned animals to identify the temporal structure responsible for Klüver-Bucy syndrome. [1] Ever since, the amygdala has remained crucial in the scientific understanding of emotion. [1] Weiskrantz is generally credited with having discovered the phenomenon of blindsight following his book on this subject in 1986, which is the voluntary visually evoked response to a stimulus presented within a scotoma. [4]
Academic and service positions he held included:
Weiskrantz supervised at least 10 PhDs, including Alan Cowey, Charles Gross, Nicholas Humphrey, Susan Iversen, and Melvyn A. Goodale.
Weiskrantz was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980. [5] [6] He was on its council in 1988–1989. [3] He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and of Academia Europaea. [3] Weiskrantz served on the Council of the Fyssen Foundation. [3]
Weiskrantz was a medalist of the Royal Society of Medicine and a medalist of the American Association for Advancement of Science. [3] He delivered the Heisenberg Lecture of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences/Siemens Foundation and the Ferrier Lecture of the Royal Society. [3] In 1997 he was awarded with an honorary doctorate at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.