In 2001, she was the recipient of the Women in Neuroscience Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2008 she became an NIH Distinguished Investigator. L. Ungerleider and M. Mishkin won the 2012 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology.

Ungerleider was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2000), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000) the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (2001), and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2009 she received the William James Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science in recognition of how her research 'advanced our understanding of brain function and its relevance to public health' and also for her mentorship of young researchers as an outstanding lecturer.