Denise Manahan-Vaughan

Denise Manahan-Vaughan is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Ruhr University Bochum, leading research in the Department of Neurophysiology. Her work centers on hippocampal synaptic plasticity, including long-term potentiation (LTP), long-term depression (LTD), and metaplasticity, exploring their roles in learning and memory pathology.

• Multidisciplinary methodologies: in vivo electrophysiology (freely moving rodents), in vitro slice preparations, calcium imaging, fMRI, and behavioral analysis.
• Investigates interactions between synaptic plasticity, place cells, and neuronal oscillations in health and diseases such as hearing loss models.
• Collaborative studies on locus coeruleus and neuromodulation in memory systems.

Her recent publications highlight the retrosplenial cortex's flexibility in spatial cognition, olfactory information storage mechanisms, and Homer1a expression dynamics in hippocampal subfields. She has contributed to understanding sensory deprivation impacts on synaptic plasticity and cross-species visuospatial perception.