John O'Keefe (neuroscientist): Difference between revisions

John O'Keefe is a neuroscientist and a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Department of Anatomy (University College London). He is known for his discovery of place cells in the hippocampus and for his discovery that place cells show temporal coding in the form of theta phase precession.

Biography

O’Keefe was born in New York City to Irish immigrant parents. He received a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York. He went on to study for his doctoral degree in physiological psychology with Ronald Melzack in Donald O. Hebb's department at McGill University in Montreal. He originally went to University College London in 1967 as a US National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow working with the late Patrick Wall. He became a professor at University College London in 1987. He is a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom

Discovery of place cells

O’Keefe discovered place cells by systematically analyzing the environmental factors influencing the firing properties of individual hippocampal neurons. His many publications on place cells have been highly cited. In addition, he published an influential book with Lynn Nadel proposing the functional role of the hippocampus as a cognitive map for spatial memory function. In extensions of O'Keefe's influential work, place cells have been analyzed experimentally or simulated in models in hundreds of subsequent papers.

Discovery of theta phase precession

In further research on place cells, O’Keefe described experimental data that strongly supports the concept of temporal coding by the timing of action potentials. In an influential paper published in 1993, he demonstrated that place cells spike at different phases relative to theta rhythm oscillations in the local field potential of the hippocampus. As a rat enters the firing field of a place cell, the spiking starts at late phases of theta rhythm, and as the rat moves through the firing field, the spikes shift to earlier phases of the theta cycle. This effect has been replicated in numerous subsequent papers, providing robust evidence for the coding of sensory input by the timing of spikes. Numerous different models have addressed the potential physiological mechanisms of theta phase precession.

Prediction and discovery of boundary vector cells

In a paper in 1996, O'Keefe and Neil Burgess presented data showing shifts in the position and size of place cell firing fields when the barriers defining the environment were shifted. In this and subsequent papers, they presented a model of this phenomenon predicting the existence of boundary vector cells that would respond at a specific distance from barriers in the environment. Several years later, this explicit theoretical prediction was supported by extensive experimental data demonstrating boundary cells with the predicted properties in the subiculum and the medial entorhinal cortex (where they are sometimes referred to as border cells).

Recent awards and positions

A Fellow of the Royal Society and the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences, O'Keefe was awarded the Feldberg Foundation Prize in 2001 for work in medical and biological science, the 2006 Grawemeyer Award in psychology (with Lynn Nadel), and the 2007 British Neuroscience Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Neuroscience. In July 2008, he received the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies [[European Journal of Neuroscience[European Journal of Neuroscience Award]], which is given in recognition of excellence in all areas of neuroscience. Later in 2008, O'Keefe was awarded the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience. He was appointed as the inaugural director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behavior.