2013 Karl Spencer Lashley Award

Autumn General Meeting
J. Anthony Movshon

The 2013 recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Karl Spencer Lashley Award is J. Anthony Movshon “in recognition of his studies of how neurons in the cerebral cortex process visual information and how cortical information processing enables seeing.” J. Anthony Movshon is currently Director of the Center for Neural Science, University Professor, Silver Professor, Professor of Neural Science, and Professor of Psychology at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1975.

J. Anthony Movshon has carried out pioneering work on the neuroscience of vision, focusing on the organization and function of area V1, the first region of cerebral cortex to receive visual information from the external world. He developed the leading quantitative descriptions of V1 neuronal activity, characterized the linear and nonlinear properties of visual signals, and developed quantitative descriptions of how neurons in higher cortical areas combine inputs from lower cortical levels to support the perception of global motion patterns. His work has shed light on the neural basis of amblyopia - the most common form of blindness - and how the effects of amblyopia might be mitigated through early intervention.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist. His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis. Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The selection committee consisted of Larry R. Squire (chair), Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, UCSD School of Medicine, Research Career Scientist, VA Medical Center, San Diego; John Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences, Harvard University; William T. Newsome III, Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Fernando Nottebohm, Dorothea L. Leonhardt Professor, Laboratory of Animal Behavior, Rockefeller University; and Carla J. Shatz, Director, BioX, Stanford University.