Elizabeth Gould (born 1962) is an American neuroscientist and the Dorman T. Warren Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. She was an early investigator of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a research area that continues to be controversial. In November 2002, Discover magazine listed her as one of the 50 most important women scientists. Gould discovered evidence of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb of rats, marmosets and macaque monkeys. In her early studies, she laid the groundwork for understanding the relationship between stress and adult neurogenesis. Specifically, she and Dr. Heather A. Cameron reported on adrenal steroid control of adult neurogenesis in rat dentate gyrus. Additionally, her work has provided evidence of neurogenesis in the adult primate neocortex. Gould and the researchers reported new neurons in adult marmoset monkeys are added to three neocortical association areas important in cognitive function: the prefrontal, inferior temporal and posterior parietal cortex. The new neurons appeared to originate in the subventricular zone, where stem cells giving rise to other cell types are located. They then migrate through the white matter to the neocortex, extending axons. Continual addition of neurons in adulthood apparently contributes to association neocortex functions. Education and early research Gould was born in 1962 and received her Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience in 1988 at UCLA. In 1989, she joined the lab of Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University as a postdoctoral researcher investigating the effect of stress hormones on rat brains. Gould's research focused on the death of cells in the hippocampus. While Gould was documenting the degeneration of these brains, she discovered evidence that pointed to the idea that the brain might also heal itself. Earlier work in neurogenesis Confused by this anomaly, Gould assumed she must have been making some simple experimental error, and she went to the Rockefeller library, hoping she could find an explanation as to what she was doing wrong. She ended up looking through numerous papers in the Rockefeller stacks. Several 1962 papers revealed the research at MIT by Joseph Altman claiming that adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs all formed new neurons. Altman's results had been at first ridiculed, then ignored, and quickly forgotten in favor of Pasko Rakic's findings. Further investigation by Gould revealed that a decade later Michael Kaplan, at the University of New Mexico, had used an electron microscope to image neurons giving birth. Kaplan had, he believed, discovered new