Brain circuitry focus of first Jack Diamond Memorial Lecture

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A new lecture series in memory of a renowned McMaster brain researcher will kick off May 24.

The first Jack Diamond Memorial Lecture will feature Stanford’s Robert Malenka talking about the brain’s circuitry underlying reward and aversion.

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Jack Diamond

The annual series was made possible with support from Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences, department chair Nick Kates and Diamond’s widow, Dusica Maysinger, a pharmacology and therapeutics researcher at McGill University.

Diamond, who died in 2014, was the first chair of the Department of Neurosciences.

He earned a PhD in physiology and a medical degree from University College in London before arriving at McMaster. He authored 50 papers between 1955 and 2012.

Malenka is the Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, director of the Pritzker Laboratory and deputy director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

A world leader in understanding the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity underlying learning, memory and addiction, his many contributions have laid the groundwork for the understanding of long-lasting activity-dependent changes in the efficacy of synapses.

Malenka also studies the synaptic action of drugs of abuse, such as cocaine and amphetamine.

The talk will take place May 24 at 3 p.m. in the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery, room 1105.

Registration is not required.

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