Endel Tulving OC FRSC (May 26, 1927 – September 11, 2023) was an Estonian-born Canadian experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist.
He joined the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences in 1992 as the first Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and remained there until his retirement in 2010.
[1][2] In 1944, following the Soviet re-occupation of Estonia, Tulving (then 17 years old) and his younger brother Hannes were separated from their family and sent to live in Germany.
[8] His published works in 1970s were particularly notable because they coincided with a new determination by many cognitive psychologists to confirm their theories in neuroscience using brain-imaging techniques.
At the time, this type of theorizing represented a major departure from many contemporary theories of human learning and memory, which did not emphasize different kinds of subjective experience or brain systems.
[15] According to Tulving, the ability to travel back and forward in time mentally is unique to humans and this is made possible by the autonoetic consciousness and is the essence of episodic memory.
Tulving's work with KC highlighted the central importance of episodic memory for the subjective experience of one's self in time, an ability he dubbed "autonoetic consciousness".
[21] Tulving also developed a cognitive task to measure different subjective states in memory, called the "remember"/"know" procedure.
Along with one of his students, Daniel Schacter, Tulving provided several key experimental findings regarding implicit memory.
[25] In 1982, architect Elmar Tampõld proposed the idea of reinvesting Tartu College's surplus revenue to found a Chair of Estonian Studies at the University of Toronto.
The three men made the initial presentation to the University of Toronto and Tampõld became the chairman of the Board of Directors for the Chair of Estonian Studies Foundation.