Edward (Ted) G. Jones, a neuroscientist and prolific neuroanatomist

Edward G. (Ted) Jones, MD, PhD, internationally acclaimed neuroscientist and authority on the anatomy of the brain and central nervous system, died suddenly on June 6, 2011, at the age of 72.

Ted G. Jones.

Jones’s research on the function and structure of the central nervous system was distinguished by its scope and breadth both technically and intellectually. He made pioneering contributions to the understanding of the cellular properties, circuitry, and basic organization of the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, their functional interrelationships, pathology, plasticity, and development. As a preeminent neuroanatomist, Jones wrote more than 20 books and 400 scientific publications. His books on the thalamus established him as an international authority on the subject. Jones’s brilliant research involved studying the role of the thalamus in coordinating and regulating cortical function associated with perception and consciousness. Ted showed that the corticothalamic system is organized to synchronize the activities of the thalamic and cortical neurons. He studied activity-dependent plasticity in the somatosensory cortex and the thalamus as it related to the recovery of function after peripheral and central neural damage. He developed immunochemical techniques to visualize neurotransmitters and their receptors and recently studied the expression of specific genes and transcription factors in the brain. It is important to note his outstanding and extraordinary work that categorized cortical neurons and classified function of their morphology, connections, and chemical characterizations.

Ted was also involved in other fundamental scientific activities. He published groundbreaking findings in schizophrenia and showed how changes at the cellular and molecular levels are associated with the disorder. The findings from these investigations have been consistently replicated in many laboratories. He conducted further investigations in this area during the past decade in his role as one of five senior Site Directors of a Pritzker Research Consortium. Over a period of 15 years, Ted played a primary role associated with a brain bank to study schizophrenia and mood disorders. This involved Ted’s expert supervision of the ongoing dissection of 22 brain areas theorized to be critical to the understanding of serious mental disorders. As part of this effort, he developed a method for fixation of previously fresh-frozen human adult tissue that preserves histological quality and immunoreactivity.

Ted’s colleagues view him as a consummate scientist and a giant in the field of neuroscience research and faculty mentorship. He received many prestigious awards including the Karl Spencer Lashley Award, the Henry Gray Award, and the Cajal Medal. In 1998, he was elected to the position of President of the Society for Neuroscience and in 2004, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Ted Jones was born in Upper Hutt, New Zealand, received his MD in 1962 from the University of Otago Medical School, New Zealand, and his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1968. In 1972, he was recruited to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, and in 1981 received an Endowed Chair. In 1984, he accepted a position as Chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine. From 1988 to 1996, he also directed research on the brain at Japan’s RIKEN Science Institute. In 1998, Jones became head of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. He was also part of a group of scientists working on the Human Brain Project with the goal of making databases available through the Internet to neuroscientists investigating the function of the brain.

Ted was a complex man with many talents and passions. He was a loving husband to his wife, a caring father to his two children and three grandchildren, a semiprofessional photographer, historian of neuroanatomy, and farmer of grapes and olives at his Davis home.

He is respected for his breadth of knowledge, his wry humor, his passion for research, and his insistence on excellence in those around him and of himself.