MUDr. Jan Bureš, DrSc.

Dr. Jan Bures, a co-founder of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Memory belongs to the most prominent and well-known brain research scientists in Czech Republic.
In the late sixties Dr. Bures pioneered research into the nature of network connectivity underlying classical conditioning at the level of single neurons by using electrical or iontophoretic stimulation of the recorded cell as the unconditioned stimulus. In the early seventies, the laboratory concentrated its efforts on additional behavioral models, conditioned taste aversion and motor learning.
During the last two decades recognition of the importance of animal models of declarative memory has oriented the laboratory to spatial memory research. Relevant contributions concerned methodological development in this field and the role of neocortex and hippocampus in the mechanisms of spatial orientation. In the last ten years, the research of Dr. Jan Bures has concentrated almost exclusively on spatial memory of rats and mice while spreading depression, conditioned taste aversion, and motor learning, in which Dr. Bures achieved a significant expertise and popularity, have gradually been phased out.
Results of the above research form the bulk of almost 500 primary articles and chapters and three monographs published from 1949 to 2008. Throughout its 50-year-long history the laboratory served as training center hosting more than 100 graduate and postdoctoral students and visiting scientists from 27 different countries (e.g. Lynn Nadel, co-autor of world-famous book „Hippocampus as a cognitive map“) The side products of the teaching activities were several books on neuroscience methods which appeared in repeated English editions and were translated into Russian and Chinese.

For this and other scientific achievements obtained in the past, Dr. Bures received a membership in th National Academy of Sciences of the USA in 1995.
  

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