Award first for MVM

Richard Morris, Professor of Neuroscience, has secured the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine’s first European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award.

He will jointly hold the grant, worth more than €3 million, with Professor Dr Guillen Fernandez of the Donders Institute at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Prior knowledge

The award will fund neuroscience research that for the first time will incorporate ideas about the role of prior knowledge into the analysis of the neurobiology of learning and memory.

Such ideas have been previously discussed and analysed by experimental psychologists and computer scientists.

However, neurobiological models of the mechanisms involved in the encoding, storage and consolidation of new information in the brain have, to date, barely incorporated the role of schemas of prior knowledge.

Education applications

The grant will also include a translational project reaching into the real-world education of Radboud University medical students.

It is also hoped that the findings will have applications in education, for example in school curriculum development and planning.

I am a great believer in trying, where possible, to build on the insights of basic research to yield educational, clinical or other practical benefits. My hope is that this exciting new project could achieve just that.