News

Dr. Ole Paulson, from the Neural Oscillations Group, University of Oxford, is visiting Cambridge and will be delivering a special lecture on hippocampal rhythm.

Friday 29th May 2009, 14:00 – 15:00
Bryan Matthews Room, Physiology Building, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, Downing Site.
This lecture is free to attend and registration is not required.

Research: Ole’s group is interested in the cellular basis of information processing in the mammalian brain. Their ambition is to elucidate the neural code for memory, i.e. how information is encoded, stored and retrieved in neuronal networks of the brain. To that end, they study the rules of synaptic plasticity at the cellular and network levels during physiologically relevant network activity using electrophysiology and imaging techniques.

Biosketch: Ole Paulsen gained a medical degree and a doctorate from the University of Oslo, Norway, before taking up a Departmental Lectureship in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford, in 1994. During the years 1996-99, he was also a Junior Research Fellow at Wadham College. He was appointed University Lecturer in the University Laboratory of Physiology in 2000, associated with a Fellowship at Keble College.

Ole Paulsen's research interests are in cellular mechanisms of neural coding. In particular his research has focussed on understanding the relation between neuronal oscillations and synaptic plasticity in cortical circuits of the mammalian brain. His work has uncovered an important role for GABAergic interneurons in rhythmic network activity, and a role for specific spike patterns in synaptic plasticity. These results are important for the understanding of memory mechanisms in the brain. Future work will include the use of advanced imaging techniques to simultaneously monitor the activity of multiple neurons during network activity.

Posted on 28/05/2009