Richard F. Thompson (b. 1930) Like Karl Lashley, Richard Thompson (1994, 2005) sought to discover the neurobiological basis for learning and memory. But, unlike Lashley, Thompson (2005) decided to use a very simple behavior—a classically conditioned eye blink—as a model system to locate a memory trace in the brain. He succeeded, identifying the critical region in the cerebellum where the memory of the learned behavior was stored.

Jacques Cornell/Happening Photos