Research

My name is Mick craig: I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, interested in how interneurons can control synchronous neuronal network activity, and how different brain regions coordinate their activity across long distances. While comprising only a small percentage of cortical neurons, inhibitory interneurons play a fundamental role in coordinating and pacing the rhythm of neuronal oscillations. My previous work has included studying slow oscillations in sensory and entorhinal cortices, and faster rhythms (gamma oscillations and sharp-wave ripples) in the hippocampus.

The research in my group uses a combination of virus-assisted circuit mapping, patch-clamp and in vivo electrophysiological recordings, combined with optogenetics / chemogenetics and behaviour,    to understand the cellular circuitry through which different brain regions communicate across long distances. We focus principally in Papez circuit, with a particular interest in how the anterior thalamic nuclei and thalamic nucleus reuniens can mediate communciation through this 'extended memory circuit'. We are also interested in studying how these long-range projections are disrupted in mouse models of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. For more information about my research see my lab webpage (link above).

Biography

I completed my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow in 2006. This degree included a year in the pharmaceutical industry, where I carried out schizophrenia research at Merck, Sharp and Dohme in Harlow, Essex. I then moved to the University of Oxford to study on a four year Wellcome Trust DPhil in the OXION programme, working with Prof Ole Paulsen and Dr Louise Upton, graduating in 2011.

In the final year of my doctoral studies, Prof Paulsen moved to the University of Cambridge to take up the Chair of Physiology, so after completing my DPhil, I spent a few months in Cambridge before moving to the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, USA) in 2011, to work as a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow in the group of Dr Chris McBain.

I moved back to the UK in early 2016 to establish my research group at the University of Exeter on an early career fellowship funded by the Vandervell Foundation, before taking up a Senior Lecturer position here in Glasgow in 2020.