Dublin Neuroscience Conference
Guest lecture
Friday October 18th2013
0830-0910
Carmichael Lecture Theatre - BeaumontHospital
Topic – To Follow
Professor Peter Redgrave MSc, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Sheffield
Research Interests: My research philosophy assumes that to diagnose and correct what has gone wrong in a complicated system, it is helpful to have a good understanding of its normal function.
Normal functions of the basal ganglia. Consequently, as a prelude to the development of more effective treatments for diseases associated with basal ganglia dysfunction (including Parkinson´s disease, schizophrenia, Tourette´s syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder and the many forms of addiction) my research is part of the research effort to elucidate normal functions of the basal ganglia.Along with the cerebellum, cortex and hippocampus, the basal ganglia constitute one of the brain´s principal processing units. Common to all is a repeating internal micro-architecture that receives input from, and provides output to functionally diverse regions of the brain. An understanding of the computational processes performed by the basal ganglia on one of its functional inputs is therefore likely to provide profound insights into how inputs from other functional systems are treated.Basal ganglia function in interaction with the superior colliculus. Thus, we have chosen to investigate how a subcortical sensorimotor structure, the superior colliculus, interacts with the basal ganglia. The superior colliculus was selected because it is one of the few brain structures whose function is comparatively well understood. It is responsible for generating the gaze-shift which brings an unexpected event onto the retinal fovea for more detailed analysis. If we can appreciate exactly how the basal ganglia contribute to this function we are likely to have a much clearer idea of what the basal ganglia do more generally.We use a wide range of anatomical, electrophysiological, electrochemical, pharmacological and behavioural techniques to investigate the functional architecture of the circuitry through which the superior colliculus and basal ganglia interact. This information is used to constrain the computational models of these circuits that have been constructed by my computational neuroscience collaborators within the Department here in Sheffield, notably, Kevin Gurney and Tony Prescott.In the near future we intend to include the expertise we have in functional imaging within the Department to augment our systems analysis of basal ganglia function