Martyn Goulding
Martyn Goulding
Martyn Goulding obtained his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Today he is Professor and Departmental Head, Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA. Adjunct Professor, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, CA, USA.
Martyn Goulding’s lab has a longstanding interest in understanding how the spinal cord is organized at a circuit level to control movement. This interest was born out of studies defining the developmental programs that specify interneuron cell types in the spinal cord. His lab has been at the forefront of efforts to identify and functionally characterize the interneuron cell types that comprise the core elements of the s locomotor central pattern generator network in the spinal cord.
One of the fundamental issues he is interested in is how the somatosensory system interfaces with the spinal motor network to control movement - this is key to understanding how the motor system is functionally organized and operates.
Currently, his team are addressing this issue in a comprehensive manner to determine how sensory information is used by the spinal cord to regulate a range of reflexive and volitional motor behaviors. He also has a strong interest in elucidating how pain and light touch modalities are encoded by our spinal cord and brain, so that we can understand at a cellular level the central pathways that carry this information, and how these pathways are altered to give rise to chronic pain and itch.
The Brain Prize 2022 is also awarded to:
