Richard G. Morris

Richard Graham Michael Morris, CBE FRS (born 27 June 1948) is a British neuroscientist. He is known for developing the Morris water navigation task, one of the currently most-widely used rodent-learning tests, and for his work on the function of the hippocampus.

He is currently the director of the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems (Edinburgh) and the Wolfson Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. Since 1997, he has been a Fellow of the Royal Society. Morris was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007.

Professor Morris and two colleagues were named as winners of the 2016 Brain Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize for neuroscience”. Professor Tim Bliss, from London’s Francis Crick Institute, and Professor Graham Collingridge, from the University of Bristol, were the other two. The scientists made discoveries about the way synaptic connections in the hippocampus brain region are strengthened by stimulation. The process, known as long-term potentiation (LTP), forms the basis of the ability to learn and to remember.

He received his BA in Natural Science from Trinity Hall, Cambridge and D.Phil. from the University of Sussex in 1973. He was a Lecturer at the University of St Andrews from 1977 to 1986 where he developed the Morris water navigation task. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1986.

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