Maria Concetta Miniaci

Universita' di Catanzaro

Cellular and Molecular Mechanism Underlying the Persistance of Long-Term Memory

2004-2005

Maria Concetta Miniaci is Assistant Professor of Physiology at the University "Magna Græcia" of Catanzaro and currently a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Eric Kandel at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University. She received her M.D. (cum laude) from the University of Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro. Her main research interests lie in the areas of synaptic plasticity and the mechanisms underlying learning and memory storage. She began her studies by investigating the role of the hippocampus in associative learning in collaboration with Pietro Scotto, University of Catanzaro, and Bruno De Luca, University of Naples. As a Fondazione Bonino Pulejo fellow with Jan Bures at the Academy of Science in Prague, she focused her research on place navigation and the cognitive map of rats guided by vestibular and kinesthetic orienting cues. She next turned her attention to an electrophysiological analysis of synaptic plasticity in the cerebellum as a CNR postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Piergiorgio Strata in Turin. As a fellow of the Italian Academy she will focus on the cellular and molecular events that underlie both the initiation and stabilization of the synaptic changes associated with long-term memory.