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Neuroscience
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2026

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Best Scientists

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164
Citations
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Neuroscience

D-Index
167
Citations
151763
World Ranking
84
National Ranking
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Research.com Recognitions

  • 2026 - Research.com Neuroscience in United States Leader Award
  • 2025 - Research.com Neuroscience in United States Leader Award
  • 2015 - William James Fellow Award, Association for Psychological Science (APA)
  • 2013 - Member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • 2011 - Karl Spencer Lashley Award, The American Philosophical Society in recognition of his seminal studies of the neural mechanisms of emotional learning, particularly fear learning and fear memory
  • 2010 - APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, American Psychological Association
  • 2006 - Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 2000 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Overview

Joseph E. LeDoux is affiliated with New York University in the United States and specializes in neuroscience and psychology. Their research primarily focuses on cognitive neuroscience and social psychology, with specific attention to areas such as memory and neural mechanisms, neural dynamics and brain function, and stress responses and cortisol.

Their work spans several subfields including molecular biology, behavioral neuroscience, and experimental and cognitive psychology. The topics covered in their research include neuroendocrine regulation and behavior, receptor mechanisms and signaling, as well as neuroscience and neuropharmacology research.

LeDoux has contributed frequently to notable publication venues. These include Current Biology, where they have appeared in seven publications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with four papers, bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) with three publications, and both Philosophical Psychology and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences with two papers each.

Their recent published papers as lead author include:

  • The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains, 2023, Philosophical Psychology
  • As soon as there was life, there was danger: the deep history of survival behaviours and the shallower history of consciousness, 2021, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

LeDoux collaborates often with other researchers. Frequent co-authors include Hakwan Lau, Elizabeth A. Phelps, Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel, Matthias Michel, and Eric Klann.

Recognitions awarded to LeDoux include the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science in 2015, membership in the National Academy of Sciences since 2013, the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from The American Philosophical Society in 2011 for studies on neural mechanisms of emotional learning, the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology in 2010, fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2006, and fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2000.

Best Publications

  • The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

    Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Emotion Circuits in the Brain

    Joseph E. LeDoux

  • The Emotional Brain

    Joseph E LeDoux

  • Differential Contribution of Amygdala and Hippocampus to Cued and Contextual Fear Conditioning

    R. G. Phillips;J. E. LeDoux

  • Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are

    Joseph E LeDoux

  • Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing: From Animal Models to Human Behavior

    Elizabeth A. Phelps;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • The emotional brain, fear, and the amygdala.

    Joseph LeDoux

  • EMOTION: Clues from the Brain

    Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Extinction Learning in Humans: Role of the Amygdala and vmPFC

    Elizabeth A. Phelps;Mauricio R. Delgado;Katherine I. Nearing;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Different projections of the central amygdaloid nucleus mediate autonomic and behavioral correlates of conditioned fear

    Joseph E. LeDoux;Jiro Iwata;Piera Cicchetti;Donald J. Reis

  • Rethinking the Emotional Brain

    Joseph LeDoux

  • HUMAN AMYGDALA ACTIVATION DURING CONDITIONED FEAR ACQUISITION AND EXTINCTION : A MIXED-TRIAL FMRI STUDY

    Kevin S LaBar;J.Christopher Gatenby;John C Gore;Joseph E LeDoux

  • Fear conditioning induces associative long-term potentiation in the amygdala

    Michael T. Rogan;Ursula V. Stäubli;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms

    Daniela Schiller;Marie H. Monfils;Marie H. Monfils;Candace M. Raio;David C. Johnson

  • The lateral amygdaloid nucleus: Sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning

    Joseph E. LeDoux;Piera Cicchetti;Andrew Xagoraris;Lizabeth M. Romanski

  • The Integrated Mind

    Michael S. Gazzaniga;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Structural plasticity and memory.

    Raphael Lamprecht;Joseph LeDoux

  • Extinction of emotional learning: Contribution of medial prefrontal cortex

    Maria A. Morgan;Lizabeth M. Romanski;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Organization of intra-amygdaloid circuitries in the rat: An emerging framework for understanding functions of the amygdala

    Asla Pitkänen;Vesa Savander;Joseph E. LeDoux

  • Emotional memory systems in the brain

    Joseph E. LeDoux

  • The amygdala

    Unknown

Frequent Co-Authors

Valérie Doyère
Valérie Doyère Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS
Glenn E. Schafe
Glenn E. Schafe City University of New York
Karim Nader
Karim Nader McGill University
Elizabeth A. Phelps
Elizabeth A. Phelps Harvard University
Donald J. Reis
Donald J. Reis Cornell University
Michael S. Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga University of California, Santa Barbara
Marie H. Monfils
Marie H. Monfils The University of Texas at Austin
Eric Klann
Eric Klann New York University
Bruce S. McEwen
Bruce S. McEwen Rockefeller University
Emily Stern
Emily Stern Brigham and Women's Hospital

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