The Department of Neurophysiology is located within the
Medical Faculty of the Ruhr University Bochum.
Chair of the department is Professor Denise Manahan-Vaughan.
The Department of Neurophysiology focusses especially on studies of the role of hippocampal synaptic plasticity, and in particular of long-term depression (LTD) in declarative memory processes in the mammalian brain.
Eight main project areas address this focus:
- Studies of the functional role of hippocampal LTD and long-term potentiation (LTP) in the acquisition of spatial and declarative memories
- Investigations of the individual roles of synaptic plasticity in the dentate gyrus,CA1 and CA3 regions in the acquisition of spatial memories
- Investigations of the interaction of the locus coeruleus with the hippocampus in the generation of synaptic plasticity and declarative memories
- Investigations of the interaction of the visual cortex with the hippocampus in the generation of synaptic plasticity and declarative memories
- Studies of the effects of environmental enrichment on learning and plasticity
- Studies of the pharmacological and physiological basis of metaplasticity
- Investigations of the functional role of metabotropic glutamate receptors in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and synaptic information storage
- Investigations of hippocampal plasticity and spatial learning under conditions of brain disease such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Schizophrenia
