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
• Benjamin Falcon - Amyloids in neurodegenerative diseases
• 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
• William Schafer - Cellular and molecular mechanisms of behaviour
• Rebecca Taylor - Understanding the systemic control of proteostasis
• Marco Tripodi - Neural circuits for goal-oriented actions
• Marta Zlatic - Circuit mechanisms of learning and action-selection

Emeritus

• Nigel Unwin - Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor