Building behavioral neuroscience in Canada and beyond

Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw began their research journeys at the University of Calgary in the 1960s, when the institution itself was still taking shape. 

Kolb, who completed his BA in psychology in 1968 and his MA in 1970, and Whishaw, who earned his BA in English Studies in 1965 before completing an MA in psychology in 1968, were among the university’s earliest cohorts. 

Studying in Calgary at the time meant working within limited resources, few formal constraints, and an unusual degree of intellectual freedom. These conditions would not only shape their own paths, but help lay the groundwork for an entire field of research. 

A small campus, a formative moment 

Both Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw recall just how small the University of Calgary was in the 1960s, at the time still operating as the University of Alberta, Calgary (UAC), before becoming an independent institution. 

The campus was sparse. “There was a building and a football field, and that was kind of it,” Whishaw recalls. 

Kolb, who attended Henry Wise Wood High School in southwest Calgary, remembers that his high school had more students than the university itself. 

In winter, the prairie wind cut across open land with nothing to slow it. “To get to the engineering building,” Kolb says, “the rule was you had to walk backwards.” The cold was so sharp, and the wind so relentless, that students would turn their backs to it, moving carefully along designated sides of the pathway to avoid colliding with one another. 

The beginning of a partnership 

Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw met in the sixties at the University of Calgary, beginning a collaboration that has now spanned more than five decades.  

Whishaw remembers the moment with humour. Another student told him, “‘There’s a guy here who can play the guitar better than you can and run faster than you can.’” His reaction was immediate: “I’ll have to work with that guy!”  

What followed was a partnership that would shape their careers and the discipline they helped build. Together, Kolb and Whishaw went on to co-author influential texts including Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology and An Introduction to Brain and Behavior, develop major research programs at the University of Lethbridge, and contribute to the development of behavioural neuroscience as a field.  

Their work and the growth of neuroscience research in Lethbridge were also highlighted in the documentary film Brainstorm.

Beyond Research Limits

The environment Kolb and Whishaw encountered as students at the University of Calgary made their collaboration possible. With the university still small and developing, there was an unusual degree of intellectual freedom.

“There weren’t a lot of rules even though there were some structures,” Kolb recalls. “You could pretty much do what you want.”  

For Whishaw, that freedom meant long hours in the lab after approaching physiologist Rodrick Cooper and asking to study under him. The lab included five other students, many of whom have gone on to become distinguished professors across Canada, and both Whishaw and Kolb worked there together.

“I spent a lot of my time just looking at rats,” Whishaw says, describing the close observation through which he began to understand behaviour.  

Kolb followed a similar path, pursuing early interests in ethology and comparative psychology under the supervision of Robert Franken. Although Franken had little interest in that direction, he allowed Kolb the freedom to pursue it.

When Kolb later moved on to graduate studies in the United States, he realized how unusual that independence had been. “I thought that’s how universities worked,” he says. “I didn’t realize your supervisor was supposed to give you a project.” 

Building behavioral neuroscience from the ground up 

When both Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw began their professional careers at the University of Lethbridge in the 1970s, the institution was still in its earliest stages. There was no permanent campus as the university was operating out of rented space in a community college.  

“There was nothing over there except this long brick building,” Whishaw recalls. Designed primarily as an undergraduate teaching institution, the university had not initially planned for psychology laboratories. 

What followed were years of negotiation, advocacy and persistence as Kolb and Whishaw worked to build research infrastructure where little had existed before. By the time Kolb joined, the situation was still evolving, and the university itself faced uncertainty.  

Declining enrolment led to public speculation about its future, with local headlines questioning whether the institution might close.  

Years later, Kolb would hear just how close that possibility had come in a conversation with former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed where he said, “’We were going to close the University of Lethbridge,’” Kolb recalls. “‘But we heard there were these two guys who were changing the place and we thought we’d give them a chance.’” 

The two guys, of course, Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw, pushing forth a new research field. 

Writing a field into existence 

As their research developed, Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw encountered another gap: there was no clear way to teach what they were discovering. So they wrote one. 

Their textbook, Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, has since become a cornerstone of neuroscience education, translated into multiple languages and cited thousands of times. But at the time, publishers were unconvinced. 

“They all said the same thing,” Kolb recalls. “‘There’s no such field. Therefore, there’s no such class, and there’s no such book.’” 

Rather than wait for approval, they completed the manuscript and tested it directly with their students. Using photocopied drafts, they asked students to write in the margins wherever something was unclear. 

“We collected all the books back,” Kolb says. “And we revised it based on what the students said.” 

Changing how the brain is understood 

That same approach, grounding theory in observation, also came to define their research. At the time, a dominant belief held that the brain was largely fixed: that early damage was easier to recover from, and that its structure remained stable over time. Bryan Kolb’s work helped overturn that view.  

“We were finding that it depended on the exact age,” he says, describing early studies of brain injury that revealed far more complex patterns of recovery. His research contributed to what is now widely understood as neuroplasticity—the idea that the brain can reorganize itself in response to experience, injury and environment. 

For Ian Whishaw, breakthroughs came through movement and behaviour. At a time when many scientists believed that only primates were capable of skilled hand use, he began closely studying how rats reach for food. Using high-speed filming, he demonstrated that they shape their digits and coordinate their movements in ways strikingly similar to humans.

“If you went to these people today and said once people thought mice couldn’t reach,” he says, “they’d look at you in amazement.” 

Today, those methods are used in hundreds of labs worldwide, further evidence of how ideas that once struggled to find a publisher would go on to help define an entire field. 

Observation, then and now

Despite the technological advances that now define neuroscience, from brain imaging to machine learning, both Kolb and Whishaw continue to emphasize the same principle that guided them as students. 

“You still have to know what you’re looking for,” Whishaw says. 

Today, he collaborates with researchers analyzing video of primates in natural environments, studying how they use their hands outside of laboratory conditions. 

Kolb points to lessons learned from working with pioneering neuropsychologist Brenda Milner, emphasizing the importance of direct human observation. 

“You can have all the fancy scans,” he says. “But you’ve got to sit down and watch. 

Advice shaped by experience 

For students entering the field today, their advice reflects decades of experience navigating and reshaping academic structures. They encourage breadth over narrow specialization and curiosity over rigid adherence to method. 

“You’ve got to really be broad-minded,” Kolb says. “Don’t think you’re always going to study the size of a rat’s toenail.” 

Whishaw, drawing on his early training as an English major, returns to the importance of communication. 

“Writing is the business of a scientist,” he says. “You can’t do anything with your data unless you know how to write it up.”