This 3-year award (£996K FEC) will fund one PDRA to work collaboratively in JH’s group and with Prof. Clea Warburton (Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, UoB); and another PDRA to work in Prof. Jon Brown’s group at the University of Exeter (UoE). The team will study how specific populations of genes are silenced via microRNAs in the brain to cause changes in protein synthesis at synapses and hence modify neuronal circuits during learning. Primary neuronal cultures in combination with iCLIP and next generation sequencing will be used to define relevant gene populations (Hanley lab), which will subsequently be validated in vivo via electrophysiology (Brown lab) and behavioural studies (Warburton lab). While focussing on fundamental mechanisms of brain function, we anticipate that this project will also be relevant to understanding neuronal dysfunction in disorders such as dementia.