James L. McGaugh (born December 17, 1931) is an American neurobiologist and author working in the field of learning and memory.

McGaugh's early work (in the 1950s and 1960s) demonstrated that memories are not instantly created in a long-term, permanent fashion.

Over the ensuing decades, McGaugh and his research colleagues and students extended the findings into a long-term investigation of emotionally influenced memory consolidation.

In particular, he has found that stress hormones, such as epinephrine and cortisol, mediate much of the effects of emotional arousal on subsequent retention of the event.

These hormones, in turn, activate a variety of brain structures, including the amygdala, which appears to play a key role in modulating memory consolidation.

He received the Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 2008 where he was elected a Fellow in 1991.

He was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award [(Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine)] in 2015.