Biography & Research:
Broadly speaking, my laboratory is interested in understanding the critical roles played by zinc (and other metals) at the synapse, with a view to how its regulation is critical to normal learning/memory and neuronal plasticity. This zinc-mediated modulation of synaptic plasticity (via effects on glutamate, glutamatergic signaling cascades, neurogenesis, neurotrophin expression etc) has downstream relevance to a number of different research foci within my lab, including both normal and pathological ageing (eg. age-related cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease and Frontotemporal dementia), as well as to other conditions (such as head trauma) that are characterized by a failure in normal zinc ion homeostasis (and parallel deficits in neuronal plasticity).