Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience welcomes nobel laureate John O'Keefe

17 Dec 2014

Click on icon to hear a recording of

Nobel Lauerate Professor John O'Keefe's Lecture

'The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map: An Update'

with introduction by

Dr Yvonne Nolan‌

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Click icon to watch Lecture

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The Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience Hippocampus in Health and Disease Symposium, recently welcomed nobel Laureate John O'Keefe as guest speaker. In recognition of the enormous contributions of Nobel Laureate John O’Keefe to neuroscience a symposium entitled “The Hippocampus in Health and Disease” took place on Monday 15^th December. Professor O’Keefe who has been jointly awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine deliverd a lecture entitled ‘The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map: an update’.

The symposium was organised by Science Foundation Ireland-funded Investigators Dr Yvonne Nolan and Professor John F. Cryan also featured a number of other Irish neuroscientists who work on hippocampal biology, and preluded the honorary conferring ceremony for Nobel Laureate John O’Keefe‌. 

John O'Keefe (Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2014) is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.  In 1971, he discovered place cells, neurons within the hippocampus  that become active when one enters a particular place in the environment. He consequently proposed the hippocampus as a cognitive map for spatial memory. His current work focuses on computational models to predict hippocampal function. Among other accolades he has recently received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (2013) and was a co-recipient of the Kavli Prize (2014).

Press coverage of Symposium and honorary conferring ceremony

RTE Nine News  - see http://www.rte.ie/news/player/2014/1215/20698345-ucc-awards-honorary-doctorate-to-prof-john-okeeffe/‌‌

 RTE Nuacht (4:12) -see http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10355278/#pos=252

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Social media – see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.774685355913972.1073741996.134737799908734&type=1‌‌

Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience

Symposium The Hippocampus in Health and Disease

Images 

James O'Leary, Yvonne Nolan, John O'Keefe, Cara Hueston, John Cryan, Ciaran O'Leime

Nobel Laureate John O'Keefe and Professor John Cryan‌

Symposium organisers Professor John Cryan and Dr Yvonne Nolan with John O'Keefe

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John Cryan, Cara Hueston, Brunno Rocha-Levone, James O'Leary, John O'Keefe, Erin Dolan, Ciaran O'Leime, Danka Kozareva, Caitriona Long-Smith and Yvonne Nolan.

Aideen Sulllivan and Mary McCaffrey

Matteo Pusceddu, Maria Donovan and Rachel Moloney

Symposium Speakers

• Link to UCC News Story section for more on the honorary conferring of Professor O'Keefe 
   
•  John O’Keefe’s interview with Jim Al-Khalili part of the BBC "The Life Scientific" series:

  http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/tls/tls_20150310-0930a.mp3 or at Life Scientific podcast page http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tls

   
• Link to http://www.ucc.ie/en/hippocampus/