Long-term potentiation: enhancing neuroscience for 40 years - satellite meeting

Professor Graham Collingridge FRS, University of Bristol, UK

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"Graham Collingridge is the Professor of Neuroscience in Anatomy in the School of Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of Bristol, UK.  From 1999 until 2012 he was also the Director of the MRC Centre for Synaptic Plasticity.  In 2001 he was elected a fellow of The Royal Society. His research interests are in the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity. He is particularly interested in how glutamate receptors and their downstream effectors are involved in the mechanisms of long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) in the hippocampus and other regions of the mammalian brain."

Professor Tim Bliss FRS, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, UK

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Tim Bliss was born in England and gained his PhD at McGill University in Canada.  In 1967 he joined the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, London, where he was Head of the Division of Neurophysiology from 1988 till 2006.   His work with Terje Lømo in Per Andersen’s laboratory at the University of Oslo in the late 1960’s established the phenomenon of long-term potentiation (LTP) as the dominant synaptic model of how the mammalian brain stores memories.  Since then he has worked on many aspects of LTP, including presynaptic mechanisms responsible for the persistent increase in synaptic efficacy that characterizes LTP, and the relationship between synaptic plasticity and memory. In May 2012 he gave the Croonian Lecture at the Royal Society on ‘The Mechanics of Memory’.

Professor Richard Morris CBE FRS

University of Edinburgh, UK

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Richard Morris is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems.  He read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge followed by a D.Phil at Sussex University.  He moved to Scotland in 1977 where he developed the watermaze in the Gatty Marine Laboratory at the University of St Andrews, moving in 1986 to the University of Edinburgh where he was appointed full Professor in 1993.  His scientific interests are in the neurobiology of learning and memory, and his research included the first demonstration that hippocampal NMDA receptors are necessary for spatial learning, the development of the synaptic tagging and capture hypothesis of protein synthesis-dependent long-term potentiation and, most recently, work on the role of mental schemas in systems consolidation. He is an elected Fellow of the AAAS, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1997.  He was appointed a CBE in 2007.