Grant: Operating Grant

We study learning and memory in the brain, because this is important for essentially everything that the brain does. Decades of research have highlighted the importance of N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in learning in the healthy brain, as well as in pathologies due to epilepsy, schizophrenia, or illicit drug use. Much of this work focused on receptors that were on the receiving end at connections between neurons, but more recent research has revealed that there are NMDA receptors located on the transmitting side. This raises the possibility that some interpretations published in the prior literature are flawed or even erroneous, since some researchers may have focused on the wrong location. Because NMDA receptors are at the heart of memory processing in the healthy brain, and because they are implicated in a multitude of disease states, a much improved understanding of these novel NMDA receptors is therefore desperately needed. Our proposed research aims to elucidate the precise location of these novel receptors as well as their function in short-term information transmission and in long-term information storage in the brain. Our proposed project will clarify this field of research, which is presently rife with controversy. It will shed light on so-called synaptic diseases that are due to e.g. illicit drugs or epilepsy, where NMDA receptors have long been implicated.