Selective targeting of synapses to specific dendritic locations and their modulation by voltage-gated channels

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The neocortex is the part of the brain that has expanded most dramatically in size and complexity in parallel with the development of human intellectual abilities. Here, countless thousands of pieces of information about our own bodies and the world around us are integrated and processed to generate perceptions and memories and to initiate appropriate responses. These pieces of information arrive from all over the nervous system as electrical signals. These electrical signals are transferred from one nerve cell, or neurone, to another via tiny chemical signals that in turn generate electrical and chemical events in each follower neurone. The receiving neurones are often very complex, in their shapes and in their electrical and chemical properties. Each one is made up of many different compartments into which information can be channelled. The properties of these different compartments, the way that events in them interact with events in other compartments and how they work together to transform the many different pieces of information that constantly bombard each neurone, into the output of that cell, is the subject of this project. We focus particularly on properties that are affected in neurological diseases such as the several different types of epilepsy, in some cases as the possible cause, in others as the brain?s response to another change or insult.