Ian Quentin Whishaw (born 1939) is a Canadian neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the understanding of the cortical organization and its relation to stroke, Parkinson’s, spatial navigation, and behavior.
Whishaw is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Lethbridge and has authored over 460 scientific papers and five books on neuroscience subjects that include a wide range of mammalian species...[1] His interests include varsity football, rugby, basketball, creative writing, and dog and horse training.
He found that rats use their hands and fingers to pick things up;[2] a discovery that extended our understanding that the skilled movements thought to uniquely characterize primates includes other orders of vertebrates.
Each of the movements is proposed to feature its own neural pathway or channel from sensory receptors to motor effectors and its own evolutionary history, accounting for the wide variety of hand and finger use skills in vertebrates.
The understanding of the rodent forepaw dexterity and use led to a range of studies that including motor cortex organization, neural plasticity, limb preference, dopamine release, sensory control, and other areas of behavior and physiology.
He is also responsible for developing a mouse model of skilled hand use that is useful for studying impairments, compensation, and recovery following brain or spinal injury.
[7][8] He has described himself as a “Vanderwolfian”, accrediting his careful study of animal behavior to his PhD supervisor, Case Vanderwolf[9] with subsequent influences from Philip Tietelbaum.
He also suggests in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews in 1998 rats with hippocampal lesions have considerable place learning ability that they are often unable to capitalize on it because of their dead reckoning impairment.
Ian’s father worked as a geologist and served in World War II as a South African pilot.
Ian attended Vancouver College for his secondary education, and his post-secondary began at the University of Notre Dame’s Indiana campus.
[17] Whishaw started as an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge in 1970, where he was responsible for teaching five different courses per semester.
[35] Whishaw’s other books include in 2017, Brain and Behaviour: Revisiting the Classic Studies,[36] and the Evolution of Feeding in Vertebrates in 2019.
He has maintained a close personal and working relationship with coworkers, former students and fellow scientists, including Terry Robinson and Timothy Schallert, Jenni Karl and his enduring writing partner, Bryan Kolb.