David Sweatt

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Director of the Evelyn F McKnight Brain Research Institute, Professor and Evelyn F McKnight Endowed Chair of the Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham

EDUCATION:
PhD, Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University
BS, Chemistry, University of South Alabama

EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES:
He is on the Editorial Board for Biological Psychiatry and has been an Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience and other scientific journals. He is the author of Mechanisms of Memory, 1st and 2nd Editions, Elsevier/Academic Press.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Our interest is in understanding the biochemical mechanisms underlying learning and memory. One of the major advances in neurobiology in the last century was the formulation of the general theory that changes in synaptic connections between neurons underlie information storage in the CNS. From our perspective one powerful offshoot of this general theory is that it allows a reductionist approach, that is, that by studying the mechanisms of long-lasting synaptic plasticity in vitro we can generate insights into the mechanisms of learning and memory in vivo. Using this rationale, for the last decade my laboratory has been investigating the biochemical mechanisms subserving the induction and maintenance of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus. In general our focus has been on signal transduction, with a particular emphasis on the role of protein kinases in LTP.

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