My research focuses on neural mechanisms of navigation in rodents Contact type Person First name Anna Surname Smith Title Dr Role Postdoctoral Research Fellow Organisation 1 1 George Square Organisation 2 Edinburgh Organisation 3 EH8 9JZ Work phone +44 (0)131 650 4353 Email anna.smith@ed.ac.uk Personal profile 2012-2016 PhD Neuroscience, University of Bristol, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience. Thesis title: The role of histone acetylation in recognition memory. Supervisors: Prof Clea Warburton & Prof James Uney. Research Image My research focuses on neural mechanisms of navigation in rodents. Neurons in areas such as the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and subiculum change their activity in response to various environmental and egocentric conditions. For example, head direction (HD) cells become active in response to the direction an animal is facing in an environment, while border cells become active along environmental borders such as walls and edges. I am interested in how the activity of these cells can contribute to the disambiguation of visually similar environments. I am addressing this question by recording the activity of these cells in different environments to study their responses to borders and head direction. I am also conducting behavioural experiments to test whether HD cells are required for animals to distinguish between visually similar environments. Recent publications Scott, H., Smith, A.E., Barker, G.R.I., Uney, J.B., Warburton E.C. (2017) Contrasting roles for DNA methyltransferases and histone deacetylases in single-item and associative recognition memory. Neuroepigenetics 9:1-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepig.2017.02.001 This article was published on 2022-10-17
Contact type Person First name Anna Surname Smith Title Dr Role Postdoctoral Research Fellow Organisation 1 1 George Square Organisation 2 Edinburgh Organisation 3 EH8 9JZ Work phone +44 (0)131 650 4353 Email anna.smith@ed.ac.uk
