Rate My Professor Guifen Chen

Dr. Guifen Chen is a Senior Lecturer in Neurobiology in the Department of Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, within the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience, and her research career has spanned universities across Asia, North America, and Europe, including the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Professor John O'Keefe. Chen's work centers on the neuronal basis of spatial cognition and memory in mice. She investigates how animals integrate sensory cues from multiple modalities—visual, auditory, and olfactory—with self-motion information to form a coherent representation of space. Her laboratory employs advanced techniques such as virtual reality setups for across-modal navigation studies, in vivo electrophysiological recordings using tetrodes and Neuropixels probes, and two-photon imaging to examine neural activity in the hippocampus and adjacent cortical areas. These methods allow precise manipulation of environmental cues impossible in real-world settings, providing insights into how place and grid cells function, as demonstrated in her recent finding that visual boundary cues alone suffice to anchor these cells in virtual reality.

Chen has authored numerous high-impact publications, including 'Visual boundary cues suffice to anchor place and grid cells in virtual reality' (Current Biology, 2024, corresponding author), 'Differential influences of environment and self-motion on place and grid cell firing' (Nature Communications, 2019), 'The Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine: Unifying space and relational memory through generalisation in the hippocampal formation' (Cell, 2020), 'Absence of Visual Input Results in the Disruption of Grid Cell Firing in the Mouse' (Current Biology, 2016, co-corresponding author), 'Spatial cell firing during virtual navigation of open arenas by head-restrained mice' (eLife, 2018), and 'How vision and movement combine in the hippocampal place code' (PNAS, 2013). Her research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society. In addition to her research, Chen serves as EDI co-Lead in her school, teaches the undergraduate module Fundamentals of Neurobiology (SNU209), and supervises PhD students, including those funded by the China Scholarship Council.