Neurobiology Division

One of the biggest challenges facing the biological sciences is to understand how brains can give rise to minds. The goal of the Division is to explore the properties of nerve cells at a fundamental level. What are the mechanisms that determine the special abilities of nerve cells to rapidly transmit and process information? What are the rules by which communication between small numbers of nerve cells in the intact brain gives rise to simple behaviours? What are the molecular processes that lead to common dementias and movement disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease?

Group Leaders and MRC Investigators

• Radu Aricescu - The structural biology of synaptic connectivity
• Anne Bertolotti - Understanding and preventing the deposition of misfolded proteins
• Albert Cardona - Experimental and comparative connectomics
• Michel Goedert - Molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration
• Ingo Greger - AMPA receptor biogenesis, structure and function
• Michael Hastings - Neurons and biological timing: molecular neurobiology of the circadian clock
• Gregory Jefferis - Neural circuit basis of olfactory perception in Drosophila
• Harvey McMahon - Membrane curvature as an organizing principle for eukaryotic cell biology
• Jing Ren - Developmental assembly of the serotonin system
• Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon - Amyloids in neurodegenerative diseases
• William Schafer - Cellular and molecular mechanisms of behaviour
• Marco Tripodi - Neural circuits for goal-oriented actions
• Marta Zlatic - Circuit mechanisms of learning and action-selection

Emeritus

• Nigel Unwin - Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Past Group Leaders 2008 - 2023

• Tiago Branco - Moved to the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, London, June 2016
• Bazbek Davletov - Moved to the University of Sheffield, September 2012
• Leon Lagnado - Moved to the University of Sussex, December 2013
• Rebecca Taylor - Moved to the University of East Anglia, December 2022
• Stephen Williams - Moved to the University of Queensland, Australia, December 2009