Anne K. Churchland is a neuroscientist at University of California, Los Angeles. Her laboratory studies the function of the posterior parietal cortex in cognitive processes such as

decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...

and multisensory integration. One of her discoveries is that individual neurons in rodent posterior parietal cortex can multitask i.e. play a role in multiple behaviors. Another discovery is that rodents are similar to humans in their ability to perform multisensory integration, i.e. to integrate stimuli from two different modalities such as vision and hearing. Churchland is an advocate of using rodents to study these cognitive processes, and together with scientists

Zachary Mainen Zachary F. Mainen (born 20 February 1969, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America) is an American neuroscientist whose research focuses on the brain mechanisms of decision-making. Zachary Mainen moved to Lisbon, Portugal in 2007 and has been ...

and

Anthony Zador Anthony M. Zador is an American neuroscientist and the Alle Davis Harris Professor of Biology and Chair of Neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is a co-founder, in 2004, of the Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) confere ...

at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory she has made substantial advances in bringing to these species the advanced behavioral techniques previously available only in primates. Churchland is a founding member of the

International Brain Laboratory The 'International Brain Laboratory'' (IBL) is a collaborative research group that aims to develop the first global model of decision making in mice. In its first phase, IBL members are recording 100,000's of neurons across virtually all brain stru ...

and an advisor to the

Allen Institute for Brain Science The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a division of the Allen Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, that focuses on bioscience research. Founded in 2003, it is dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. Wit ...

. She is the founder of ''Anneslist'', a website which promotes equality in representation across genders in scientific meetings. Her parents are the philosophers Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland and her brother is neuroscientist Mark Churchland.

Family

She is the daughter of analytical philosopher Patricia Churchland and philosopher Paul Churchland. Her brother, Mark Churchland, is also a neuroscientist working as assistant professor at Columbia University.

Selected awards

McKnight Scholar Award (2012) Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts (2014) Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences from the Simons Foundation and the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund (2014)

References

External links

Faculty profile at UCLA

Churchland Laboratory

International Brain Laboratory

Anneslist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Churchland, Anne Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Canadian neuroscientists Canadian women neuroscientists American neuroscientists American women neuroscientists Wellesley College alumni University of California, San Francisco alumni 21st-century American women