|
|
LAWRENCE -- A major figure in discovering how the brain stores memory is the second speaker in the Kansas Colloquia on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
William Greenough, Swanlund chair and Center for Advanced Study professor of psychology, psychiatry, and cell and structural biology at the University of Illinois, will continue the colloquia's discussion of fragile X developments at noon Thursday, May 9, in Rieke Auditorium at the KU Medical Center. Fragile X is the most common inherited form of mental retardation.
The Kansas Colloquia on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities bring scientists at the forefront of developmental disabilities research to the Lawrence and KU Medical Center campuses for free public lectures and small group meetings with faculty and students. Donald Bailey, director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was the colloquia's first speaker on April 17.
Greenough, a neuroscientist, is focusing on the role of FMRP in fragile X syndrome, or FXS. The fragile X syndrome genetic mutation shuts down FMRP, a protein that is essential for regulating brain function.
FMRP may cause cellular changes that affect the stability of newly formed connections or synapses between nerve cells, according to Greenough. This has brought new understanding of fragile X as well as how experience may be recorded in the brain.
Greenough is an authority on the effects of experience and learning on the structure and function of the mammalian brain. His research is the basis for the current belief that memory involves the formation and modification of the synapses through which nerve cells communicate.
The colloquia are sponsored by KU developmental disabilities researchers who represent a spectrum of the behavioral and biological sciences, including the Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies, the Institute for Child Development, the Center for Reproductive Sciences, the Beach Center on Disability, the Juniper Gardens Children's Project and the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities.
-30-
This site is maintained by University Relations, the public relations office for the University of Kansas Lawrence campus. Copyright 2002, the University of Kansas Office of University Relations. Images and information may be reused with notice of copyright, but not altered. kurelations@ku.edu, (785) 864-3256.