Colin Blakemore
Colin Blakemore (born June 1, 1944 in Stratford-upon-Avon ) is a British neuroscientist.
Blakemore studied medical science at Cambridge and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley . He taught at the Physiological Laboratory and Downing College in Cambridge and from 1979 at Oxford University, where he was Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Professoral Fellow at Magdalen College until 2007 . From 1990 to 1996 he was director of the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and from 1996 to 2003 of the Oxford Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. From 2003 to 2007 he was Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC) of Great Britain. From 2007 he was again Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College until 2012. In 2012 he became Professor of Neuroscience and Philosophy at the University of London (School of Advanced Study) and Head of the Center for the Study of the Senses.
He conducted research on the early development of the brain in embryos and was instrumental in consolidating knowledge about the plasticity of the brain. In particular, he did research on visual perception. He demonstrated that many skills of visual perception such as recognizing lines and complex scenes are learned and depend on the environment in which animals grow up. For example, he and Grahame Cooper let young cats grow up in cylinders with only vertical or horizontal stripes in the first few months. Later they could only see vertical or horizontal stripes. The Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel carried out similar experiments .
In 2012 he received the Ralph W. Gerard Prize , the Ferrier Medal and in 1990 the Michael Faraday Prize . 2014 was ennobled. That was eleven years after he was denied the actually obligatory ennoblement as director of the MRC, which, as he later learned, was due to the fact that he was a prominent advocate of animal experiments.
He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1992 .
Fonts (selection)
- with HB Barlow, JD Pettigrew: The neural mechanism of binocular depth discrimination, Journal of Physiology, Volume 193, 1967, pp. 327-342
- with P. Sutton: Size adaptation: A new aftereffect, Science, Volume 166, 1969, pp. 245-247
- with FW Campbell: On the existence of neurones in the human visual system selectively sensitive to the orientation and size of retinal images, Journal of Physiology, Volume 203, 1969, pp. 237-260
- with GF Cooper: Development of the brain depends on the visual environment, Nature, Volume 228, 1970, p. 477
- with RHS Carpenter, MA Georgeson: Lateral inhibition between orientation detectors in the human visual system, Nature, Volume 228, 1970, p. 37
- with RC van Sluyters: Reversal of the physiological effects of monocular deprivation in kittens: further evidence for a sensitive period, Journal of Physiology, Volume 237, 1974, pp. 195-216
- with EA Tobin: Lateral inhibition between orientation detectors in the cat's visual cortex, Experimental Brain Research, Volume 15, 1972, pp. 439-440
- Mechanics of the Mind, Cambridge UP 1977 (BBC Reith Lectures)
- with DG Pelli: The quantum efficiency of vision, in: Vision: Coding and Efficiency, 1990, pp. 3–24
- with JW Scannell, MP Young: Analysis of connectivity in the cat cerebral cortex, Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 15, 1995, pp. 1463-1483
- with Z. Molnar: How do thalamic axons find their way to the cortex ?, Trends in Neuroscience, Volume 18, 1995, pp. 389-397
- with A. van Dellen u. a .: Delaying the onset of Huntington's in mice, Nature, Volume 404, 2000, p. 721
- with D. Nutt, LA King, W. Saulsbury: Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse, The Lancet, Volume 369, 2007, pp. 1047-1053
- with I. Bystron, P. Rakic: Development of the human cerebral cortex: Boulder Committee revisited, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Volume 9, 2008, p. 110
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Professor Colin Blakemore honored 10 years after being denied knighthood , The Independent, June 14, 2014
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Blakemore, Colin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British neuroscientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 1, 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stratford upon Avon |