[3] Kehoe worked for the Centre national de la recherche scientifique,[2] where she made many other discoveries in neuroscience.
The youngest of three, Kehoe and her family moved to Evansville, Indiana, for the duration of World War II for her father’s work.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research she furthered her study of discrimination learning in pigeons, rats and squirrels and became increasingly focused on the physiological basis of behavior.
[2] In a nearby lab Felix Strumwasser was using neurons from Aplysia californica, a species of sea slug, to study circadian rhythms.
[2] Attempting to use curare, a Cholinergic antagonist, to this end, she observed instead a change in the cells' spontaneous synaptic activity.
After many tests using a setup of her own design Kehoe discovered that methyl-xylocholine, an Adrenergic neuron blocker, inhibited the K-dependent response she had found in the cells.
Kehoe worked under Gabriel Horn in the anatomy department, who arranged for her to be admitted to High Table at King's College.
At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, she taught summer courses to students with an interest in neuroscience research from 1971 to the mid-1980s.
[2][10] She continued her research to identify the neurotransmitters used in Aplysia, turning her attention towards glutamate[2][11] receptors in the late 20th century.