Exceptional young scientist wins acclaimed Pauline Ashley Prize
19 October 2009
The Deafness Research UK Pauline Ashley Prize 2010 has been awarded to Nick Leach, a PhD student at the University of Oxford, for his highly commended and ongoing research into how the hearing brain adapts to different sounds.
The prize was established in memory of the charity’s founder, Lady Pauline Ashley, and aims to encourage the most promising young scientists to start or continue research into hearing and deafness. Awarded annually to an exceptional young scientist near the beginning of their career in hearing research, the prize enables them to gain valuable research experience in a leading research centre overseas, so that knowledge gained will be brought back to the UK to the benefit of the British deafness research community.
Nick will travel to Shihab Shamma’s lab at the University of Maryland in the USA to conduct his research. He will be investigating whether a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine affects the brain’s ability to learn and re-learn behaviour. He will be working with ferrets trained to do behavioural tasks and seeing whether the lack of cholinergic cells hinder their ability to re-learn the task. Nick commented: “I am extremely grateful to Deafness Research UK for giving me the opportunity to visit the lab at the University of Maryland and discover if this neurotransmitter is an important factor, and in doing so hope to provide research that will effectively contribute to the way brain adaptation, within an audiological environment, is understood in the UK.”
The judging panel of Nick’s competition entry, said: “This candidate is outstanding with an excellent academic track record. The project is clearly described and covers the very important area of investigating the role of cholinergic neuromodulation in relation to the adaptation of the brain. The host laboratory is excellent and the collaboration should propagate long-lasting links. The personal strengths of the applicant and the quality of the host laboratory make this application a winner,”
Ade Deane-Pratt, research communications manager for Deafness Research UK, said: “Nick has proven his abilities as a researcher. We are absolutely delighted that he has chosen to pursue what is such an important area of deafness research. Nick’s work is thoroughly deserving of the Pauline Ashley Prize and we wish him every success with this and future research projects.”
Nick's work at the University of Maryland will further develop his research, already begun at Oxford, using ferrets from Shihab Shamma's lab previously trained in a variety of sound detection and discrimination tasks to determine whether compromised cholinergic function impairs their behavioural performance under conditions of increased attentional load or affect the task-dependent, receptive field plasticity of cortical neurons. Nick will assist with the collection and analysis of these data and assess the extent of cholinergic cell loss back in Oxford.
