Fellow

Professor Peter Somogyi is Director of Anatomical Neuropharmacology Uni in Oxford. He has been a pioneer in the rigorous spatio-temporal and molecular definition of synaptic networks in the brain. He has made seminal contribution to explaining how synaptically connected neurons, organised into microcircuits, form the basis of neuronal operations and has explored synaptic networks of the thalamus, cerebellum, the basal ganglia and, in particular, the cerebral cortex including the hippocampal formation. Through the combined use of anatomical, physiological and pharmacological tools on the same identified cell he discovered, defined and named novel cell types in the cortex via quantitative analysis of their synaptic connections, molecular constituents and synaptic action. Following his discovery of the axo-axonic cell and proving that its action was mediated by GABA-A receptors on the axon of pyramidal cells, he established that different functional domains on the surface of pyramidal cells are served by distinct classes of local GABAergic neuron. Recognising that differentiation in neuronal networks is accompanied by molecular specialisations in signalling pathways, Peter Somogyi pioneered the high resolutions quantitative electron microscopic immuno-localisation of neurotransmitters and their receptors. He and his colleagues discovered that synaptic and extrasynaptic receptors activated by the same transmitter have different subunit composition. He also demonstrated that ion channel forming and G protein coupled receptors are located in distinct subsynaptic membrane domains at synapses. Furthermore, he discovered that the level of presynaptic receptors, and hence the probability of transmitter release, is regulated in a target cell specific manner along the same axon.