Professor Malcolm Brown

Department of Anatomy, University of Bristol
Email: M.W.Brown@bristol.ac.uk
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Professor Brown’s group researches into the neural bases of learning and memory, particularly recognition memory and event memory. These researches employ a variety of different techniques including electrophysiological, immunohistochemical, anatomical, pharmacological, psychological, genetic and computational. A major aim is to test parallels between observations at the cellular, systems and behavioural levels of analysis. The primary focus is on the role of the perirhinal cortex and associated areas in familiarity discrimination. The laboratory was the first to signal the particular importance of perirhinal cortex to familiarity discrimination and to demonstrate the differential encoding of information concerning the familiarity and recency of occurrence of individual items. Recent work has established a role for the hippocampus in discriminating the familiarity of arrangements of items. These researches are conducted in close collaboration with Dr Zafar Bashir, and Professors John Aggleton and John Pearce within the MRC Co-operative on Neuronal Plasticity, Learning and Memory at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Other current research includes studies of the neural basis of the recognition memory that underlies imprinting in collaboration with Professor Gabriel Horn at Cambridge, and anatomical changes underlying familiarity discrimination with Professor Mike Stewart at the Open University. Projects currently underway include:

• A multi-level analysis of brain systems for event memory.
• Forgetting rates and the influence of context within recognition memory.
• Mapping the neural bases of recognition memory using immediate early gene expression.
• Neuronal processing of information related to recognition memory for objects and scenes.
• The functions of metabotropic glutamate receptors in the perirhinal cortex.
• Influence of GABA in synaptic transmission in the perirhinal cortex.
• Role of galanin and acetylcholine in the regulation of perirhinal synaptic transmission and recognition memory.
• Development of neural network models of familiarity discrimination and recognition memory (with C. Giraud-Carrier of the Department of Computer Science).