Michael Fanselow

Michael Fanselow is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He serves as Director of the Behavioral Testing Core and holds the Staglin Family Chair while directing the Staglin Music Festival Center for Brain & Behavioral Health. He has previously held academic positions at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and Dartmouth College.

His research focuses on fear learning, memory systems, and neural circuitry, particularly examining the roles of the amygdala and hippocampus in contextual fear conditioning, stress-enhanced fear learning, and neuroplasticity. His work also investigates traumatic brain injury effects on behavioral sensitization, sex differences in emotional processing, and pharmacological interventions for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Fanselow has published extensively in top-tier journals such as Science, Nature, and Neuron, with recent work analyzing stress-resilience mechanisms, social support in fear inhibition, and adaptive properties of stress. His research spans computational models of memory (e.g., BaconREM), neural substrates of fear generalization, and neurodegenerative processes post-injury.

Scientific Recognition:

• Recipient of the Edwin B Newman Award for dissertation research
• Received Early Career Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from APA
• Honored with D. O. Hebb Award and Troland Award from NAS
• Former President of APA Division of Behavioral Neuroscience and Pavlovian Society

He has mentored numerous students and collaborators in fear conditioning studies, including work on GABA receptor subunits, cholinergic modulation, and neural circuit mapping. His laboratory at Franz Hall (Los Angeles, CA) integrates electrophysiology, genetic models, and behavioral pharmacology to investigate fear memory dynamics and stress-alcohol interactions.