Morris Moscovitch

Biosketch

Morris Moscovitch, (BSc, McGill, 1966; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1972; Post-doctoral, Montreal Neurological Institute, 1973-1974) is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto (1971-present) and Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre (1989-present). Born in Romania in 1945, he moved to Israel at four and to Canada at seven. Married to Jill, they have two children, Elana and David.

He is the recipient of lifetime achievement/distinguished career awards: Mentorship Award from Women in Cognitive Science (2005),Hebb Award (2007) from the Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science, William James Award (2008) from the Association for Psychological Science; Kavli Award (2012) from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Distinguished Career Award from the International Neuropsychological Society(2012); JJ Berry Smith Doctoral Supervision Award from the University of Toronto (2015). and Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists (2022). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2002), he was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 2020

Research Interests

Working with neurological patients and healthy young and old adults, Dr. Moscovitch has made important contributions to research on face-recognition, attention, and hemispheric specialization. He is known best for his work on the cognitive and brain basis of recent and remote memory. His Component Process Model of Memory posits that the neural structures mediating memory encoding, retention and retrieval depend on interactions between the nature of memory representations and task demands. This model underlies his Multiple Trace Theory and Trace Transformation Theory which account for hippocampal-neocortical interactions in systems level consolidation/reorganization of memory.