MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology MPhil/PhD at Kings College London

Overview

• 2008 RAE Divisional Results: Recognised as contributing 'world-leading quality' research work

• Research income: £6.5m for 2014/2015

• Current number of academic staff: 29

• Current number of research students: 36

• Current research projects include:

  • Lineage specification of cortical circuits
  • Integration of chandelier cells in visual cortex networks
  • Imaging activity and nucleogenesis in the zebrafish
  • Molecular mechanisms of cerebellar evolution
  • Morphological and molecular characterisation of transit amplifying granule cell precursors

Description

The human brain is by far the most complex structure on Earth. Consider that it contains a thousand billion neurons, of a thousand or more different, individual types, and that each neuron is wired up to as many as five hundred other neurons; this allows the possibility for a really vast number of alternative wiring configurations - more, it has been estimated, than there are molecules in the universe. Yet the elaborate pattern of connectional networks between neurons that constitutes the machinery for sensation, movement, emotion and thought, is remarkably similar between individuals. Indeed, the basic plan of the brain - the layout of its command and control centres and all but the smallest details of its wiring diagram - appears to be virtually identical between individual humans and recognisably similar between human and mouse.

Furthermore, this 'ground plan' of the brain is genetically determined, or 'hard wired', leaving only the fine details of network construction to be influenced by the electrical activity of circuits and environmental experience. Such is the complexity of the brain's construction, however, that neurobiologists are still far from a complete structural and functional understanding of its basic operations, such as those we have in common with chickens and mice, let alone even beginning to understand the nature of the higher functions - such as thought and consciousness - of which possibly only the human brain is capable.

It is our goal to further the understanding of this structure through our current research programmes, which are:

• Building brains: animal models and tissue engineering
• Assembly and Plasticity of Neural Circuits
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders