His graduate student, David A. McCormick discovered that the cerebellum was critical in learning and performance in classical conditioning.
[1] During his career, he served as editor-in-chief of the scientific journals Physiological Psychology, Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, and Behavioral Neuroscience.
[2] Thompson was born in Portland, Oregon and obtained a bachelor's degree in psychology from Reed College and a master's and PhD in psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison,[3] before dying in Los Angeles, California.
Thompson published 450 research papers, which, according to the Web of Science, have been cited nearly over 23,000 times, giving him an h-index of 80.
[4] In 1967, he authored Foundations of Physiological Psychology (New York, Harper & Row, ISBN 978-0063565227), which "revolutionized the way that behavioral neuroscience was presented and learned".