Suzanne Corkin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Suzanne Corkin
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| Born |
Suzanne Hammond
May 18, 1937 Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
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| Died | May 24, 2016 (aged 79) Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Smith College (B.A.) McGill University (M.Sc., Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Studies of human memory; work with H.M. |
| Spouse(s) | Charles Corkin (divorced) |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience Psychology |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | Somesthetic function after focal cerebral damage in man (1964) |
| Doctoral advisor | Brenda Milner |
| Doctoral students | John Gabrieli Christopher I. Moore |
| Other notable students | Neal J. Cohen (postdoc) |
Suzanne Corkin (May 18, 1937 – May 24, 2016) was an American professor of neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. She was a leading scholar in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. She is best known for her research on human memory, which she studied in patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amnesia. She is also well known for studying H.M., a man with memory loss whom she met in 1962 and studied until his death in 2008.
Early life and education
Corkin was born Suzanne Janet Hammond in Hartford, Connecticut, the only child of Lester and Mabelle Dowling Hammond. She studied psychology at Smith College in Massachusetts, and obtained a PhD at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, supervised by Brenda Milner. Milner studied a man named Henry Molaison, who had sustained severe memory loss as a result of brain surgery for uncontrolled epileptic seizures. Corkin met him in 1962 and tested his memory relating to his sense of touch "Somesthetic function after focal cerebral damage" which became the subject of her PhD.
Career
After she completed her PhD in 1964 she moved to the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to join the laboratory of Hans-Lukas Teuber. In 1977, when Teuber passed away, Corkin became director of the human neuropsychology laboratory and, in 1981, was promoted directly from the position of Principal Research Scientist to Associate Professor with tenure.
From that point forward, Corkin directed the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory, making seminal contributions to many different domains of cognitive neuroscience. These contributions included further delineation of memory systems required for different forms of nondeclarative learning, elucidation of memory deficits that arise in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and contributions toward theoretical debates regarding the role of the medial temporal lobe in the retrieval of remote memories.
Corkin was also an early adopter of human neuroimaging methods and used these methods to elucidate the neural bases of different forms of human memory and of age- and disease-related changes in memory networks. She utilized both functional and structural MRI methods. Some of the last publications from her laboratory reported the benefits of a multispectral structural magnetic resonance imaging method for measuring the volumes of the substantia nigra and basal forebrain in patients with Parkinson's disease (Ziegler and Corkin, 2013; Ziegler et al., 2013).
Corkin continued to work with the amnesic patient H.M., protecting his identity until his death in 2008, at which point his identity was revealed to be Henry Molaison. She discussed the story of H.M. in her 2013 book Permanent Present Tense.
Mentorship
Corkin was widely recognized for her advocacy for women and minorities in science. During her time at MIT, she was a freshman advisor for 17 years, and served on a number of institute and departmental committees. In 2011, she received the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Undergraduate Advising Award at MIT.
Personal life
Her marriage to Charles Corkin ended in divorce. She died of liver cancer in Danvers, Massachusetts on May 24, 2016, six days after her 79th birthday. She is survived by three adult children, Damon, J. Zachary, and Jocelyn Corkin, as well as seven grandchildren.
See also
In Spanish: Suzanne Corkin para niños
