The Clopath Lab is based at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and at Imperial. It uses computational and mathematical tools to address the questions of learning and memory in the brain.

Working in close collaboration with experimental neuroscientists, the Clopath Lab studies the role of synaptic plasticity in learning and memory by constructing models that mimic the brain’s activity. This work can be applied in medical settings, where it can help scientists design research on neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and in engineering settings, where it can be used to design machines that approach human-like learning capabilities.

The lab is broadly interested in the questions of learning and memory. Learning is thought to change the connections between the neurons in the brain, a process called synaptic plasticity. Using mathematical and computational tools, we model synaptic plasticity across different time scales that reproduce experimental findings. We then study the role of synaptic plasticity by constructing networks of artificial neurons with plastic synapses. Working in collaboration with other labs at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, we are working to understand the link between connectivity changes and behavioural learning.

For more details, see the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory website.