Kate Jeffery

Last updated

Kate J. Jeffery
Born5 March 1962 (1962-03-05) (age 62)
Alma mater University of Otago, University of Edinburgh
SpouseJim Donnett
Scientific career
Institutions University College London, University of Glasgow
Academic advisors Richard Morris, John O'Keefe

Kathryn Jane Jeffery (born 5 March 1962) is a neuroscientist from New Zealand. She is a professor of behavioural neuroscience at University College London. She studies how the brain encodes three-dimensional and complex space, and the role of this representation in spatial cognition and navigation.

Contents

Early life and career

Jeffery grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand, the daughter of an orthopaedic surgeon and operating theatre nurse. She went to S. Hilda's Collegiate School for girls and then attended Otago University Medical School, spending clinical training years in Christchurch. She met Jim Donnett during her time in Edinburgh. They moved to London together when she began her postdoctoral work. They were married in 1993 and later had three daughters, in 1994, 1997 and 2002.

Jeffery graduated with a degree of MB ChB from the University of Otago in 1985. [1] After working as a house officer, she returned to the University of Otago to complete a master's degree in 1989 under the supervision of Cliff Abraham. [1] [2] She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1993 under the supervision of Richard Morris. [1] [2] [3] She went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher with John O'Keefe, who won the 2014 Nobel Prize for his work on place cells, at University College London. [1] [4] Jeffery correctly predicted he would win the Nobel Prize in a tweet. [4] During this time she met May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser [4] who visited the lab for several months. Donnett sold them a newly designed recording system, this being the first sale from the company Axona Ltd he founded with Jeffery and which they still direct. This recording system later became the one with which the Mosers discovered grid cells, and now resides in the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm.

Jeffery stayed at University College London to become a lecturer and later a professor. [1] Here, she founded the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, of which she was also director. [1] [5] From 2010 to 2013 she was head of department for Experimental Psychology (which back then was called Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences). From 2021 to 2022 she was Vice Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Brain Sciences. In September 2022 she moved to the University of Glasgow to head the newly formed School of Psychology & Neuroscience.

Research

Jeffery is particularly interested in the representation of 3D space within the hippocampal system in our brain. [6] [7] The hippocampus contains place cells, discovered by O’Keefe in 1971, and her work has focused on the question of how a place cell “knows” when to become active. A long running thread has been how the brain integrates static information from environmental landmarks and dynamic information arising from movement through space. Her lab was the first lab after the Moser to discovery to publish work on grid cells, [8] shwing that these neurons also integrate learned static environmental information with their self-motion signals. More recent work has addressed the issue of whether the internal map extends upwards as well as across horizontal space (in other words, whether it is three-dimensional). Jeffery's original proposal in 2011 was that the map is essentially “flat” (2-D), [6] with relatively little sensitivity to upwards movement, but more recent work has modulated that view as it seems that in some types of environment the place-cell map can be 3-D. [9]

A second interest has been in how the brain uses “context” to help determine which environment the animal is in. Jeffery also studies head direction cells which are cells in the brain that represent the direction an animal is facing. [10] [7] [11] In 2017 her lab discovered a new type of neuron in retrosplenial cortex that links viewing scene and facing direction. [12]

Science and art

Jeffery has been involved in a number of projects linking neuroscience and art. She collaborated on the piece Spin Glass with Jenny Walsh and Jeremy Keenan, which represents the head direction network in the brain of an animal. [13] [14] She consulted on the Off-Broadway play The Nature of Forgetting, about how the brain represents memory. [15] [16] [17]

Jeffery is also interested in the link between architecture and the representation of location in the brain. She presented at the Conscious Cities conferences on how the design of environments affects the sense of direction [18] and at the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) and has written on the subject with an article [19] and a book chapter. [20]

Honours

Jeffery is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation. [21] She a former vice-president for the Royal Institute of Navigation. [1] [21]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscience</span> Scientific study of the nervous system

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscientist</span> Individual who studies neuroscience

A neuroscientist is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial cells and especially their behavioral, biological, and psychological aspect in health and disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Place cell</span> Place-activated hippocampus cells found in some mammals

A place cell is a kind of pyramidal neuron in the hippocampus that becomes active when an animal enters a particular place in its environment, which is known as the place field. Place cells are thought to act collectively as a cognitive representation of a specific location in space, known as a cognitive map. Place cells work with other types of neurons in the hippocampus and surrounding regions to perform this kind of spatial processing. They have been found in a variety of animals, including rodents, bats, monkeys and humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Barres</span> American neurobiologist

Benjamin Arthur Barres was an American neurobiologist at Stanford University. His research focused on the interaction between neurons and glial cells in the nervous system. Beginning in 2008, he was chair of the Neurobiology Department at Stanford University School of Medicine. He transitioned to male in 1997, and became the first openly transgender scientist in the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Bargmann</span> American neurobiologist

Cornelia Isabella "Cori" Bargmann is an American neurobiologist. She is known for her work on the genetic and neural circuit mechanisms of behavior using C. elegans, particularly the mechanisms of olfaction in the worm. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and had been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UCSF and then Rockefeller University from 1995 to 2016. She was the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative from 2016 to 2022. In 2012 she was awarded the $1 million Kavli Prize, and in 2013 the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Daniela Schiller is a neuroscientist who leads the Affective Neuroscience Lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is best known for her work on memory reconsolidation, and on modification of emotional learning and memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John O'Keefe (neuroscientist)</span> American–British neuroscientist

John O'Keefe, is an American-British neuroscientist, psychologist and a professor at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour and the Research Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at University College London. He discovered place cells in the hippocampus, and that they show a specific kind of temporal coding in the form of theta phase precession. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014, together with May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser; he has received several other awards. He has worked at University College London for his entire career, but also held a part-time chair at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology at the behest of his Norwegian collaborators, the Mosers.

Yi Zuo is a neuroscience professor and researcher born in China. She studies molecular, cellular and developmental biology. Zuo is currently an associate professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where she also heads a research lab.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School</span> Academic Department at Harvard University Medical School, USA

The Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, MA. The Department is part of the Basic Research Program at Harvard Medical School, with research pertaining to development of the nervous system, sensory neuroscience, neurophysiology, and behavior. The Department was founded by Stephen W. Kuffler in 1966, the first department dedicated to Neurobiology in the world. The mission of the Department is “to understand the workings of the brain through basic research and to use that knowledge to work toward preventive and therapeutic methods that alleviate neurological diseases”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Tsao</span> American neuroscientist

Doris Ying Tsao is an American neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology and molecular cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology for 12 years. She is recognized for pioneering the use of fMRI with single-unit electrophysiological recordings and for discovering the macaque face patch system for face perception. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the director of the T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience. She won a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship in 2018. Tsao was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. In 2024 she was awarded a Kavli Prize in neuroscience along with Nancy Kanwisher and Winrich Freiwald for the discovery and study of specific areas in the brain that perform facial recognition. After joining UC Berkeley in 2021, her current research explores visual perception in primates in order to understand how the brain creates our sense of reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gina Rippon</span> Professor of cognitive neuroimaging

Gina Rippon is a British neurobiologist and feminist. She is a professor emeritus of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Rippon has also sat on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology. In 2019, Rippon published her book, Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, which investigates the role of life experiences and biology in brain development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathryn Mary Murphy</span> Canadian neuroscientist

Kathryn Mary Murphy is a Canadian neuroscientist and professor who studies development and plasticity of the brain.

Kathryn Emma Watkins is an experimental psychologist in the Wellcome Trust centre for integrative neuroimaging at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her research investigates the brain processes that underlie speech, language and development.

Catherine J. "Cathy" Price is a British neuroscientist and academic. She is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London.

Moriel Zelikowsky is a neuroscientist at University of Utah School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the brain circuits and neural mechanisms underlying stress, fear, and social behavior. Her previous work includes fear and the hippocampus, and the role of neuropeptide Tac2 in social isolation.

Lisa Giocomo is an American neuroscientist who is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Giocomo probes the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying cortical neural circuits involved in spatial navigation and memory.

Patrizia Casaccia is an Italian neuroscientist who is the Director of the Neuroscience Initiative of the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a Professor of Neuroscience, Genetics & Genomics, and Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Casaccia is a pioneer in the study of myelin. Her research focuses on understanding the neurobiological and neuroimmune mechanisms of multiple sclerosis and to translate findings into treatments. Casaccia co-founded the Center for Glial Biology at Mount Sinai and CUNY and is one of the Directors of the center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ardem Patapoutian</span> Molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate 2021

Ardem Patapoutian is a Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. He is known for his work in characterizing the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius.

Sonja Hofer is a German neuroscientist studying the neural basis of sensory perception and sensory-guided decision-making at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. Her research focuses on how the brain processes visual information, how neural networks are shaped by experience and learning, and how they integrate visual signals with other information in order to interpret the outside world and guide behaviour. She received her undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Munich, her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and completed a post doctorate at the University College London. After holding an Assistant Professorship at the Biozentrum University of Basel in Switzerland for five years, she now is a group leader and Professor at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour since 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Mrsic-Flogel</span> Experimental neuroscientist

Tom Mrsic-Flogel is an experimental neuroscientist. He is Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and a Professor in Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). Mrsic-Flogel is a founding member of the International Brain Laboratory.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Office, FENS. "Kate Jeffery". FENS.org. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  2. 1 2 katejeffery (21 November 2012). "About me". Corticalia. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  3. ↑ "67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution – Sean Carroll". www.preposterousuniverse.com. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 Woolston, Chris (2014). "Nobel forecasting brings fun to online discussions". Nature News. doi: 10.1038/nature.2014.16135 . S2CID   181183671.
  5. ↑ "Cognitive neuroscience and architecture". The Centre for Conscious Design. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  6. 1 2 Welsh 2011-08-08T18:52:02Z, Jennifer (8 August 2011). "Brain Finding May Explain Disoriented Pilots, Astronauts". livescience.com. Retrieved 1 February 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. 1 2 "Kate Jeffery – Knowledge Quarter" . Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  8. ↑ Barry, Caswell; Hayman, Robin; Burgess, Neil; Jeffery, Kathryn J. (June 2007). "Experience-dependent rescaling of entorhinal grids". Nature Neuroscience. 10 (6): 682–684. doi:10.1038/nn1905. ISSN   1546-1726.
  9. ↑ "You live in a mostly 2D world, but the map in your brain charts the places you've been in 3D". massivesci.com. 18 November 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  10. ↑ Webb, Jonathan (13 May 2015). "Donut-shaped 'compass' in fly brain". BBC News. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  11. ↑ "A Map to Attach Memories to". Losing Myself. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  12. ↑ Jacob, Pierre-Yves; Casali, Giulio; Spieser, Laure; Page, Hector; Overington, Dorothy; Jeffery, Kate (February 2017). "An independent, landmark-dominated head-direction signal in dysgranular retrosplenial cortex". Nature Neuroscience. 20 (2): 173–175. doi:10.1038/nn.4465. ISSN   1546-1726. PMC   5274535 . PMID   27991898.
  13. ↑ "2018 – Art of Neuroscience" . Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  14. ↑ Simon, Johnny (18 August 2018). "These beautiful works of art illustrate the brain's complexity". Quartz. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  15. ↑ BWW News Desk. "London's Theatre Re Explores Dementia Through Physical Theater In THE NATURE OF FORGETTING". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  16. ↑ "The Nature of Forgetting in UK tour". Entertainment Focus. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  17. ↑ Lee, Jenny (17 May 2018). "The art of forgetting: Show explores memory, dementia and importance of the here and now". The Irish News. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  18. ↑ Bond, Michael. "The hidden ways that architecture affects how you feel". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  19. ↑ Jeffery, Kate (2 November 2019). "Urban Architecture: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective". The Design Journal. 22 (6): 853–872. doi:10.1080/14606925.2019.1662666. ISSN   1460-6925. S2CID   203090221.
  20. ↑ Kanaani, Mitra, ed. (2023). The Routledge companion to ecological design thinking: healthful ecotopian visions for architecture and urbanism. Routledge companions. New York London: Routledge. ISBN   978-1-003-18318-1.
  21. 1 2 "UCL Minds Lunch Hour Lecture: The psychology of climate inaction – London | Events | The British Neuroscience Association". www.bna.org.uk. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.