Ann E. Kelley

Ann Elizabeth Kelley (1954–2007) was an American neuroscientist, who specialized in the neuroscience of reward and behavior. She was a professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Biography Kelley was born in Milton, Massachusetts. She became interested in neuroscience during a field trip to Harvard. where she was captain for both the field hockey and lacrosse teams. She then received a Thouron fellowship which allowed her to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge, England, under the supervision of Susan Iversen. Later, she held research and teaching positions at the University of Bordeaux in France, Harvard University and Northeastern University, before settling at the University of Wisconsin, where she was named Wisconsin Distinguished Neuroscience Professor in 2006. She died from metastatic colon cancer on August 5, 2007 at her home in Madison, Wisconsin, at the age of 53.

Kelley was an accomplished athlete, being a pioneering player for the women's lacrosse team and the field hockey team at the University of Pennsylvania. Following these studies she focused on eating behavior and food intake. She found that eating behavior was mediated by μ-opioids, but this was mechanism was dependent on the palatability of the food.

Together with Ned Kalin, Kelley demonstrated the role of the amygdala in the linking of sensory representations and their motivational value. After lesioning the amygdala in rhesus monkeys, they found that the monkeys no longer learn proper fear responses to stimuli, such as a predator. They showed that these projection were much more extensive than previously thought, and that the amygdala innervates large parts of the caudal striatum. She found that the consumption of salty and sweet foods was influenced injection of a μ-opioid antagonist into the nucleus accumbens in a similar way the intake of alcohol, but not the intake of water, was.

Legacy Two years after her death, Kelley posthumously received the Patricia Goldman-Rakic Hall of Honor award by the Society for Neuroscience.