Michael E. Goldberg

David Mahoney Professor of Brain and Behavior
Columbia University

Michael E. Goldberg is David Mahoney Professor of Brain and Behavior in the departments of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and ophthalmology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, director of the Mahoney-Keck Center for Brain and Behavior Research, and is an active clinical neurologist. His neuroscience research focuses on the physiological basis of cognitive processes such as visual attention, spatial perception and decision-making. He earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1968. From 1978 to 2001, Goldberg was a senior investigator at the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a past president of the Society for Neuroscience, and now chair of the society’s Committee on Animals in Research.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Barbara Finlay looking at a glass jar with a brain.

Remembering Barbara Finlay, ‘maverick’ of evolutionary neuroscience

Finlay, who died on 12 September, championed the idea that developmental constraints dictate how evolution sculpts brains, a concept she used to model the timing of hundreds of events and align them across mammalian species.

By Calli McMurray
23 October 2026 | 8 min read
A crow looking at a screen showing a circle of white dots on a black background.

Crows have brains ‘in the fast lane’

The birds accurately complete decision-making tasks twice as fast as primates, although their endbrains look considerably different.

By Sarah Thau
22 October 2026 | 4 min read
A boy manipulates blocks at a table while sitting across from a woman taking notes.

Prevalence of profound autism declines with new definition

The updated, more precise definition used in a CDC study includes adaptive scores.

By Brianna Abbott
22 October 2026 | 5 min read