Professor Lucy Palmer
BSc, BA, MSc, PhD

Lucy Palmer obtained a Masters in Science from the University of Minnesota and was awarded a PhD from the Australian National University in 2008. She completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland and Humboldt University, Berlin, before returning to Australia to head the Neural Network Laboratory at The Florey in 2013.

Her laboratory investigates the neural activity contributing to sensory-based behaviour and memory formation in the mammalian brain. She is particularly interested in how synaptic input and the resulting dendritic integration is modulated by feedback information from different brain regions. To address this, her laboratory uses various techniques to record from neurons in vivo, including two-photon calcium imaging, somatic and dendritic patch-clamp electrophysiology and optogenetics.

Through this work, Neural Networks Group will not only illustrate how sensory information is received, transformed and modulated in neurons but also how this processing of synaptic input contributes to the overall neural network activity underlying learning and behaviour.