Denise Manahan-Vaughan

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Denise Manahan-Vaughan is a member of the Executive Committee and Governing Council of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, and Chairperson of the Network of European Neuroscience Schools.

A native of Rathgar in Dublin, Ireland, she studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with an honours degree, specialising in Physiology in 1988. She completed a PhD in Neuropharmacology in 1992. In the mid 1990s she moved to Germany, working first as a research scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg, and completing a Habilitation degree in Physiology at the Otto von Guericke University in 1998.

She became associate Professor of Physiology at the Johannes Muller Institute for Physiology at the Charite in Berlin where she established the Synaptic Plasticity Research Group. In 2003 she became Professor of Neuroscience at the Ruhr University Bochum, where she established the Learning and Memory Research Department and became Dean of Studies and Director of the International Graduate School of Neuroscience.

In 2008 she became Chair of the Department of Experimental Neurophysiology, within the Medical Facuty, of the Ruhr University Bochum.

Her research focusses on characterising the the role that synaptic plasticity plays in declarative memory formation in the mammalian brain. She has produced well over 50 international scientific publications on the area of hippocampal function. Her groundbreaking findings with regard to the role of hippocampal long-term depression in memory processing (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 96(15):8739-44; Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 101(21):8192-7) resulted in the development of a whole new perspective and research direction in hippocampal memory research.

She is a niece of the renowned Irish actress, Anna Manahan.

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