Thomas J. Carew, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at New York University, is an American neuroscientist whose interests center on the behavioral, cellular, and molecular analyses of learning and memory.
Early in his career, in collaboration with Eric Kandel and colleagues, Carew provided the first evidence in Aplysia californica—the California sea slug—for both long-term memory and associative learning in this model system.
[3] Second, he developed experimental methods which permit independent analysis of somatic and synaptic compartments of identified neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) that are involved in memory formation showing, for instance, that local protein synthesis at the synapse is essential for the induction of intermediate-term memory.
[6][7] Finally, in more recent work, he has identified the contribution of a number of specific molecular cascades, as well as their interactions, in the induction and consolidation of different forms of memory.
[8][9][10][11][12] Carew's research contributions all connect specific synaptic and molecular events to bona fide instances of memory expressed behaviorally.