Jay Goldberg, Prof. Emeritus and vestibular system scholar, 1935 to 2019

June 21, 2019

Jay Goldberg, wearing glasses and suspenders, stands by a notice board.

Dear colleagues, I’m saddened to report the death of Jay Goldberg, Professor Emeritus of Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences, who died June 17. He summarized his research interests as follows: "The vestibular end organs inform the brain about head movements and head position. Central vestibular pathways use the information to produce reflex adjustment of the eyes, head, and body. Our goal is to understand the operation of the entire system in terms of its cellular components. To this end, a combined neurophysiological, morphological and behavioral approach is used. The research program ranges from biophysical studies of the isolated sensory organs to single-unit recordings in alert monkeys. The vestibular system offers two advantages. First, the coding of sensory information is considerably simpler than that occurring in visual, auditory or somatosensory systems. This allows us to study peripheral transduction mechanisms in a system where we have a good understanding of the kinds of information conveyed to the brain. Second, the presence of reflexes simplifies the functional interpretation of neuronal processing. At the same time, the reflexes have a number of interesting features, including voluntary control and adaptive plasticity."

-David Bevington, Prof. Emeritus and Co-Chair of the Emeriti Faculty Steering Committee