Lawrence Weiskrantz (28 March 1926 – 27 January 2018) was a British
neuropsychologist
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...
. Weiskrantz is credited with discovering the phenomenon of
blindsight
Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. The term was coined by L ...
, and with establishing the role of the
amygdala
The amygdala (; plural: amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex verte ...
in
emotional learning and emotional behavior.
Blindsight is when a person with a brain injury causing blindness can nevertheless detect, point accurately at, and discriminate visually presented objects.
Early life
Weiskrantz originally attended
Girard College, a boarding school in
Philadelphia, due in part to the death of his father when he was six.
After graduating, he attended
Swarthmore College and served in
World War II.
Shortly before his graduation, he was awarded a Catherwood fellowship at
Oxford University.
Career
Weiskrantz became Professor of Psychology at Oxford University where he remained a full professor until retirement in 1993.
He then became an emeritus professor of the university and an emeritus fellow of
Magdalen College
Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the ...
.
Weiskrantz had a lifelong interest in the writings and research of the Russian neuropsychologist
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
, whom he had met and befriended while Luria was still doing research.
The two remained colleagues until Luria's death in 1977.
In the 1950s Weiskrantz went on to ellucidate the region of the
temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe is involved in pr ...
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.
Although this hypothesis did not live to its claims, Weiskrantz used
instrumental fear conditioning
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus (e.g. an electrical shock) is associated with a particular neutral context (e.g., a ...
in lesioned animals to identify the temporal structure responsible for
Klüver-Bucy syndrome.
Ever since, the
amygdala
The amygdala (; plural: amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex verte ...
has remained crucial in the scientific understanding of emotion.
Weiskrantz is generally credited with having discovered the phenomenon of
blindsight
Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. The term was coined by L ...
following his book on this subject in 1986, which is the voluntary visually evoked response to a stimulus presented within a
scotoma.
Academic and service positions he held included:
* Part-time Lecturer, Tufts University, 1952
* Research Associate, Inst. of Living, 1952–55
* Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, US National Research Council, 1955–56
* Research Associate,
University of Cambridge, 1956–61
* Assistant Director of Research, Cambridge, 1961–66
* Reader in Physiological Psychology, Cambridge Univ., 1966–67.
* Founding President of the
European Brain and Behaviour Society The European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) is a scientific society founded in 1968 whose stated purpose is the exchange of information between European scientists interested in the relationships between brain mechanisms and behaviour. It is the ...
, 1969
* Professor of Psychology,
Oxford University, and Fellow,
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College (, ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 ...
, 1967–1993;
*
Professor Emeritus, Oxford University, 1993–2018 and Emeritus Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford, 1993–2018.
* Honorary President of European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
* Inaugural President of European Brain and Behaviour Society.
* President of Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness.
Weiskrantz supervised at least 10
PhDs, including
Alan Cowey
Alan Cowey FMedSci, FRS (28 April 1935 – 19 December 2012) was a British scientist and academic, and the Emeritus Professor of Physiological Psychology at the University of Oxford. His primary interest was in the way in which we interpret the ...
,
Charles Gross
Charles Gross (born 13 May 1934) is an American film and TV composer, living in New York City.
Gross, born in Boston, Massachusetts, was educated at Harvard University (BA), the New England Conservatory and Mills College (teaching fellowship), a ...
,
Nicholas Humphrey,
Susan Iversen
Susan Diana Iversen (born 28 February 1940) is a British experimental psychologist. She is a former Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford
Early life and education
She attended Girton College, Cambridge. At Cambridge she did a BA in ...
, and
Melvyn A. Goodale.
Honours
Weiskrantz was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1980.
He was on its council in 1988–1989.
He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and of Academia Europaea.
Weiskrantz served on the Council of the Fyssen Foundation.
Weiskrantz was a medalist of the Royal Society of Medicine and a medalist of the American Association for Advancement of Science.
He delivered the Heisenberg Lecture of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences/Siemens Foundation and the Ferrier Lecture of the Royal Society.
In 1997 he was awarded with an honorary doctorate at
Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
Selected publications
* ''Analysis of Behavioural Change'', 1967
* ''The Neuropsychology of Cognitive Function'', 1982
* ''Animal Intelligence'', 1985
* ''Blindsight: A case Study and Implications'', 1986
* ''Thought Without Language'', 1988
* ''Consciousness Lost and Found'', 1997
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiskrantz, Lawrence
1926 births
2018 deaths
Fellows of the Royal Society
British Jews
Jewish scientists
British psychologists
Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
British military personnel of World War II
20th-century American psychologists