Mammalian Hippocampal Formation
The hippocampus and other medial
temporal lobe regions of the human brain are crucial for both the
acquisition of new memories and the formation of spatial maps of the
environment. It has long been assumed that these related functions
depend upon information passed to the hippocampus from the cortex
flowing through the processing chain within the hippocampal
'trisynaptic loop'. This scenario assumes that information is processed
from one hippocampal subfield to the next in a purely sequential
fashion, via feed-forward excitatory connections, from hippocampal
input to output. Recent studies, however, highlight the importance of
direct cortical inputs to hippocampal subfields as being important in
cognition. Thus, the anatomy of the hippocampus operates in a parallel
rather than purely sequential manner and we need to take this into
account in our investigation of hippocampal function.
Current experiments in the lab are centred on investigating the flow of
information within medial temporal lobe structures in both the normal
brain and that of transgenic mice that model Alzheimer's Disease
and other pathologies. Techniques currently in use include (a)
recording evoked
neural activity in rodents using multiple-electrode silicon arrays and
(b) measurements of behavioural learning
(e.g., for episodic-like memory). The lab operates within
the Faculty of Life Sciences and we are part of the Systems
Neuroscience Research Group.