UCL Neuroscience

UCL has a long tradition in the neurosciences. Henry Dale and Otto Loewi both worked in Ernest Starling's laboratory in 1904 and went on to share the 1936 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their seminal investigation on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. Starling's successor, Archibald Hill, fostered the career of Bernard Katz, whose long association with UCL began in 1935. Later on in 1970, he shared the Nobel Prize with Ulf von Euler, who had also worked in Hill's laboratory at UCL, and Julius Axelrod, once again for work on chemical neurotransmission.

Fatt and Katz were the first to propose that neurotransmitter release at synapses was quantal in nature. They also uncovered the mechanism underlying inhibitory synaptic transmission.

In a series of seminal papers in the early 1970s, Katz and Ricardo Miledi, described a statistical analysis of fluctuations they observed in the membrane potential at the frog neuromuscular junction, which were induced by acetylcholine. This approach, which became known as ‘noise analysis’, allowed the first measurement of the conductance and lifetime of single ACh receptor channels.

Katz's work had a strong influence on another future Nobel Prize winner, Bert Sakmann. He spent two years at UCL in Katz's biophysics laboratory and it was here that he developed his interest in the molecular aspects of synaptic transmission. He went on to directly measure singe ion channel currents by developing the now ubiquitously used patch-clamp technique with Erwin Neher. They shared the 1991 Prize in recognition of their work on the function of single ion channels

Neuroscience at UCL has long been a major cross-disciplinary endeavour. Indeed, JZ Young, Professor of Anatomy, 1945–74, discovered and was the first to investigate the squid giant axon. Young's work on squid giant axons was utilized by Andrew Huxley and Alan Hodgkin who in 1963 received the Nobel Prize for their work on the conduction of action potentials along nerve fibres. To achieve this, they developed a voltage-clamp technique to demonstrate that impulse transmission relied upon the selective permeability of the nerve fibre membrane to particular ions. This ground-breaking advance laid the foundations for much of modern-day electrophysiology.

In June 2004, a team of researchers from the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at UCL published research in Nature describing how the human brain subconsciously remembers the details of past dangers.[3] In December 2004, researchers from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience published research identifying the part of the human brain where unconscious fluid movements are stored.[4] In 2005, Tania Singer and Professor Christopher Donald Frith of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Functional Imaging Laboratory published the results of a study using transcranial magnetic stimulation which showed for the first time the role of sensorimotor components in empathy for pain in other people.[5] In February 2006, a team from UCL led by Dr Leun Otten published research showing that it may be possible to predict how well the human brain will remember something before the event has even taken place.[6]

In April 2006, a team from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience published research showing that individuals with a skill for learning other languages could have more "white brain matter" in a part of the brain which processes sound.[7] In August 2006, a team led by Dr Emrah Duzel of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience published research showing that exposure to new experiences can boost the memory of the human brain.[8] In January 2007 Professor van der Lely of the UCL Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience published details of a 10-minute screening test capable of identifying pre-school children who might be dyslexic.[9]

In June 2008, a team led by Professor Maria Fitzgerald of UCL Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology published research showing that infants may be experiencing discomfort when their body movements, blood pressure and facial expressions show them to be pain free.[10][11]

In March 2009 a team led by Professor Eleanor Maguire of UCL published a study showing that it is possible read a person's spatial memories by using a brain scanner to monitor the electrical activity of the brain.[12] In December 2009, Professor Sophie Scott of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience conducted research into how the human voice works and interacts with the brain as part of BBC Radio 4's Vox Project.[13]

In March 2010, Stephanie Burnett of UCL published a study of attitudes to risk which showed that adolescents are more excited when they have lucky escapes when playing video games than other age groups.[14] In June 2010, academics from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience published research suggesting that humans have a distorted "mental map" of their hands, which stretches them in one direction and squashes them in the other.[15] In September 2010 academics from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Pompeu Fabra University, ICREA and the University of Barcelona published research identifying an area of the human brain which constructs a 'map' of the human body in space using a combination of tactile information from the skin and proprioceptive information about the position of the hands relative to the rest of the body.[16]