Space in the brain: cells, circuits, codes and cognition

Dr Tom Hartley, University of York, UK

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"Tom Hartley is a cognitive neuroscientist and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of York. His PhD at UCL developed a model of serial order in verbal short-term memory. Several postdoctoral positions at UCL culminated in a long spell at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience working with Neil Burgess and John O’Keefe during which he combined neuroimaging, neuropsychological and behavioural investigations of spatial cognition in humans with computational modelling of neural representations and behaviour. His current research investigates the brain basis of individual differences in spatial memory and the parts played by ventral visual cortex and retrosplenial cortex in scene processing and spatial representation."

Professor John O’Keefe FRS, University College London, UK

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"John O’Keefe FRS is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where he works in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and is currently Interim Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour.

O’Keefe is interested in the role of the hippocampal formation in spatial memory and navigation. Using extracellular recording in behaving rats, O’Keefe discovered that hippocampal pyramidal cells respond selectively to an animal’s spatial location. The discovery of ‘place cells’ suggested that this part of the brain might function as a cognitive map, a notion developed extensively by O'Keefe and Nadel in a book published in 1978 (www.cognitive map.net). In 1993, he and Recce reported that the hippocampal code for location was based on the timing, as well as the rate, of place cell activity. The timing code is referenced to the 7-11 Hz theta rhythm seen in the hippocampal LFP as the animal moves around an environment. O’Keefe suggested this phase precession effect might be due to interference wavelets produced by the summation of 2 theta- like oscillators of differing frequencies. With Burgess and Barry, he has extended this model to 2 spatial dimensions and shown how this extended model accounts for the firing fields of entorhinal cortical grid cells. He has recently turned his attention to the amygdala and its role in active memory for ethologically significant stimuli."

Professor Neil Burgess, University College London, UK

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"Neil Burgess is Professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. His laboratory investigates the neural mechanisms of memory using a combination of methods including computational modeling, human neuropsychology and functional neuroimaging and single unit recordings in freely moving rodents. His main goal is to understand how the actions of networks of neurons in our brains allow us to remember events and the spatial locations where they occurred. After studying Maths and Physics at UCL he did a PhD in Theoretical Physics in Manchester and a research fellowship in Rome, before returning to UCL funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. "

Dr Colin Lever, University of Durham, UK

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"Following undergraduate and Master’s degrees at Oxford University then UCL, Colin did his PhD in John O’Keefe’s laboratory in UCL, working on learning and memory in hippocampal place cells. He did further postdoctoral work with John O’Keefe and Neil Burgess, and spent a few months in Bob and Caroline Blanchard’s lab in the US on a Bogue Fellowship in 2005. He set up his own lab in Leeds University in 2005, and moved to Durham University in 2011, where he is Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Psychology Department. Colin’s work focuses on spatial cells, memory mechanisms, and the theta oscillation. Colin gratefully acknowledges funding for the research presented at this meeting (talk, poster) from the BBSRC and Royal Society."