The 2026 Picower Lecture with Richard L. Huganir
Richard L. Huganir discusses research on the molecular mechanisms that regulate glutamate receptors, the brain's major excitatory neurotransmitter receptors, and thereby modulate communication between neurons.
Why nanoscale (co-)organization of glutamate receptors is essential to understand synaptic physiology?
Presynaptic plasticity in hippocampal circuits
Christophe Mulle is a cellular neurobiologist with expertise in electrophysiology of synaptic transmission and an international leader in studies on glutamate receptors and hippocampal synaptic plasticity. He was among the first to identify and characterize functional nicotinic receptors in the mammalian brain while working in the laboratory of Jean-Pierre Changeux at the Pasteur Institute. He then generated knock-out mice for KAR subunits at the Salk Institute in the laboratory of Steve Heinemann, which have proven to be instrumental for understanding the function of these elusive glutamate receptors in synaptic function and plasticity.