Dr. McNaughton's research focuses on the molecular, cellular and brain system mechanisms of memory and memory disorders associated with aging and brain damage.

His early career concentrated on the biophysics of long-term synaptic potentiation and the role of this process in associative information storage. This work was highlighted by the first demonstration that "Hebbian" principles of association, which form the basis of all neural network learning algorithms, are embodied in the actual dynamics of experience dependent synaptic plasticity.

In the last 15 years, Dr. McNaughton has been at the forefront of development of methods to study the large-scale interactions of neurons in the intact brain during the encoding, storage, recall and consolidation of memory. Methods developed in his laboratory at the University of Arizona now make it possible to record from several hundred cortical neurons during learning experiments in animals, providing an unprecedented window on how neurons cooperate during cognitive processing.These methods are also being directed towards the development of neuroprosthetic systems that will use direct brain recording to control muscle activity in patients with spinal injury.

At the other end of the scientific spectrum, Dr. McNaughton is a key member of an interdisciplinary team involved in the development of immediate-early gene activation markers of neural activity in the brain. This method permits visualization of the recent history of activity in the brain at cellular resolution, thus allowing identification of not only which areas of the brain are activated during cognitive processing, but which specific neurons. This method will provide an important complement to non-invasive, but lower resolution, functional neuroimaging studies using magnetic resonance.

Dr. McNaughton teaches courses in Neural Coding and Computation and Mammalian Neurophysiology and supervises postdoctoral associates and graduate students in Psychology, Neuroscience, Physiological Sciences, Applied Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering. He also provides research mentorship in the neurosciences to numerous undergraduates research assistants through the Undergraduate Biology Research Program (UBRP) at the University of Arizona.