Marta Kutas (born September 2, 1949) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

and Chair of cognitive science and an

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. She also directs the Center for Research in Language at UCSD. Kutas is known for discovering the N400, an

event-related potential An event-related potential (ERP) is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sense, sensory, cognition, cognitive, or motor system, motor event. More formally, it is any stereotyped electrophysiology, electrophysiologi ...

(ERP) component typically elicited by unexpected linguistic stimuli, with her colleague Steven Hillyard in one of the first studies in what is now the field of

neurolinguistics Neurolinguistics is the study of neural mechanisms in the human brain that controls the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as n ...

. Kutas received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in 1971 from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in 1977 from the

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the Flagship#Colleges and universities in ...

, and she completed a

postdoctoral fellowship A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

at the

in 1980. She then accepted a position as a research neuroscientist in the Department of Neurosciences at UCSD, and she has been a member of the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD since its founding in 1988. In 2018 Kutas was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

External links

Marta Kutas' HomepageKutas Cognitive Electrophysiology Lab
American cognitive neuroscientists American women neuroscientists Psycholinguists Oberlin College alumni University of Illinois alumni University of California, San Diego faculty 1949 births Living people 21st-century American women scientists {{US-psychologist-stub