On Tuesday 17th April 2018, the Department hosted the inaugural Sir Charles Sherrington Lecture.
Sherrington came to the Department in 1913 as the Waynflete Professor of Physiology; he was recommended for the chair unanimously without any other candidates being considered.
Sherrington received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1932 with Edgar Adrian for their work on the functions of neurons. Prior to the work of Sherrington and Adrian, it was widely accepted that reflexes occurred as isolated activity within a reflex arc; instead Sherrington and Adrian showed that reflexes require integrated activation and demonstrated reciprocal innervation of muscles, a principle now known as Sherrington's Law.
The Sir Charles Sherrington Lecture was given by Professor Mu-ming Poo on Neural Plasticity from Synapse to Cognition.
Poo is the Founding Director of the Shanghai-based Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where in 2017 he led a team of scientists that produced the world’s first truly cloned primates, a pair of crab-eating macaques called Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using somatic cell nuclear transfer.
He was also the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Poo used to commute frequently between Berkeley and Shanghai, until the constant travel became too much and he decided to focus his attention to Shanghai; therefore he is now an Emeritus Professor at Berkeley.
Poo was awarded the 2016 Gruber Prize in Neuroscience for his pioneering work on synaptic plasticity.
The lecture was followed by a drinks and canapes reception in the foyer, at which the Department's new Centre for Integrative Neuroscience was officially opened. Find out more here.
To view more pictures of the lecture, click here.
To find out more about Sherrington, click here.