Prof Troy Margrie

Research summary

Information about the world around us is gathered by our sensory organs and relayed to the brain, where it is processed and integrated by neuronal circuits. Such stimulus-related network activity is thought to represent an organism's external world and underlie cognitive processing and the generation of motor output. Our major aim is to determine the ways in which synaptic potentials, oscillatory rhythms and plasticity within neural circuits contribute to the representation and processing of the necessary information. We combine genetics, physiology, behavior and theory to examine the integrative elements that are involved in processing at various levels of sensory pathway. More specifically we use behavioral techniques in mice to determine the temporal constraints of olfactory processing. Subtle genetic manipulations of the olfactory circuit allows us to monitor in vivo the contribution of specific assemblies of cells to odor discrimination. Secondly we use in vivo recordings from individual and multiple cells in the cortex to investigate how information arriving from different sensory modalities influence the representation of a given sensory stimulus.

Education

University of Newcastle

PhD, Neuroscience | 1998

University of Newcastle

BSc Hons, Neuroscience | 1994

Publications