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

随着人类智力的发展，大脑的新皮层在大小和复杂程度上都得到了最显著的扩展。在这里，关于我们自己的身体和周围世界的无数条信息被整合和处理，以产生感知和记忆，并引发适当的反应。这些信息以电信号的形式从神经系统的各个部位传递过来。这些电信号通过微小的化学信号从一个神经细胞或神经元传递到另一个神经细胞或神经元，这些化学信号反过来在每个跟随神经元中产生电子和化学事件。接收神经元的形状、电学和化学性质通常都非常复杂。每一个都由许多不同的隔间组成，信息可以通过这些隔间传递。这些不同隔室的特性，这些隔室中的事件与其他隔室中的事件相互作用的方式，以及它们如何协同工作，将不断轰炸每个神经元的许多不同信息，转化为那个细胞的输出，是这个项目的主题。我们特别关注受神经系统疾病影响的特性，例如几种不同类型的癫痫，在某些情况下是可能的病因，在另一些情况下是大脑？对另一个变化或侮辱的反应。

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.