James McGaugh

James L. McGaugh, Ph.D., is an American neurobiologist working in the field of learning and memory. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Additional recommended knowledge

Guide to balance cleaning: 8 simple steps

Weighing the right way

How to ensure accurate weighing results every day?

McGaugh received his B.A. from San Jose State University in 1953 and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959. He was briefly a professor at San Jose State and then became a professor at the University of Oregon from 1961-1964. He was then recruited to the University of California, Irvine, in 1964 (the year of the school's founding) to be the founding chair of the Department of Psychobiology (now neurobiology and behavior: [1]). He became dean (1967-1970) of the School of Biological Sciences and eventually Vice Chancellor (1975-1977) and executive Vice Chancellor (1978-1982) of the university, though he maintained his laboratory throughout that time. In 1983, he founded the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory ([2]) and remained director from 1983-2004.

McGaugh's early work (in the 1950s and 1960s) demonstrated that memories are not instantly created in a long-term, permanent fashion. Rather, immediately after a learning event, the memory is labile and susceptible to influence. As time passes, the memory becomes increasingly resistant to external influences and eventually becomes stored in a relatively permanent manner. This process is called memory consolidation. Dr. McGaugh found that drugs, given to an animal after a learning event, influence the subsequent retention of that event. The concept of such "post-training" manipulations is one of Dr. McGaugh's greatest contributions to the field of learning and memory because it avoids many potential confounds, such as performance effects of the drug, that may occur when a drug is given prior to the training.

Over the ensuing decades, Dr. McGaugh extended his findings into a long-term investigation of emotionally-influenced memory consolidation. As most people realize, they have stronger memories for long-ago events that were emotionally arousing in nature, compared with memories for emotionally neutral events (which may not be remembered well at all). Dr. McGaugh has examined how emotional arousal influences memory consolidation. In particular, he has found that stress hormones, such as cortisol, mediate much of the effects of emotional arousal on subsequent retention of the event. These hormones, in turn, activate a variety of brain structures, including the amygdala, which appears to play a key role in modulating memory consolidation. The amygdala, when activated, influences a variety of other brain structures, such as the hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens, that process information for the memory. It is through this "orchestra" of brain structures that memories are eventually formed and stored, though the exact nature of memory storage remains elusive.

McGaugh has been recognized in honor of his achievements, accomplishments, and contributions to the field of learning and memory. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, has served as president of the American Psychological Society and the Western Psychological Association, and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Arts and Sciences. In 2001, the University of California, Irvine, named a building after him, McGaugh Hall.