Brenda Milner (née Langford; born 15 July 1918) is a British-Canadian neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology.

[2] Her work covers many aspects of neuropsychology including her lifelong interest in the involvement of the temporal lobes in episodic memory.

[8][9] Her father Samuel Langford was a musical critic, journalist, and teacher, and her mother (née Leslie Doig) was one of his students.

[8] As a result of World War II, the work of the Cambridge Psychological Laboratory, under Bartlett's leadership, was diverted almost overnight to applied research in the selection of aircrew.

[6][8][11] "Later in the war, from 1941 to 1944, she worked in Malvern as an Experimental Officer for the Ministry of Supply, investigating different methods of display and control to be used by radar operators.

[18] In this publication, she presented data that showed that temporal lobe damage can cause emotional and intellectual changes in humans and lower primates.

[19] Her review of neuroscience studies conducted in animals discouraged many neurosurgeons from completing surgeries on humans that could negatively impact their lives.

[23] Milner discovered from H.M. and other case studies that "bilateral medial temporal-lobe resection in man results in a persistent impairment of recent memory whenever the removal is carried far enough posteriorly to damage portions of the anterior hippocampus and hippocampal gyrus.

Milner stated in an interview with the McGill Journal of Medicine, "To see that H.M. had learned the task perfectly but with absolutely no awareness that he had done it before was an amazing dissociation.

"[22] She has made major contributions to the understanding of the role of the frontal lobes in memory processing, in the area of organizing information.

Milner helped describe the lateralization of function in the human brain and has shown how the neural substrate of language in the cerebral hemispheres can vary in left-handed, right-handed and ambidextrous individuals (see handedness).

[25] These studies of the relationship between hand preference and speech lateralization led to an understanding of the effects of early unilateral brain lesions on the pattern of cerebral organization at maturity.

Using mostly prize money from her numerous awards, Milner donated 1 million dollars to the Montreal Neurological Institute in 2007, after establishing a foundation in her name.

[26] In more recent times, Milner has expanded her research to the study of brain activity in normal subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET).

[23] These studies focus on the identification of brain regions associated with spatial memory and language, including the neural substrates of monolingual and bilingual speech processing.

[23] In another series of PET studies, she has sought to delineate further the role of the right hippocampal region in memory for the spatial location of objects.

[33] That same year, Milner participated in a video series, launched by the Montreal Neurological Institute, dedicated to promoting female scientists and researchers.

[5] Other awards and recognition include: Election to the National Academy of Sciences (1976), the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease (1996), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005), the Dan David Prize (2014), the Prix Hommage du 50e anniversaire from the Ordre des psychologues du Québec (2014), induction into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame (2012), recipient of a medal of honour from the National Assembly of Quebec (2018),[28] Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2011), the Norman A. Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award (2010), the Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience by NARSAD (2009), the NSERC Medal of Excellence (2009 and 2010), the Gairdner Foundation International Award (2005), the Prix Wilder-Penfield (Prix du Québec) (1993), and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.