Rate My Professor Leon Lagnado

Leon Lagnado is Professor of Neuroscience in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex, where he serves as Director of Sussex Neuroscience. He earned a degree in Physiology from University College London in 1985 and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge under Peter McNaughton, investigating retinal photoreceptors' responses to light. His postdoctoral research with Denis Baylor at Stanford University deepened his focus on the retina as a neural circuit. In 1993, he joined the Neurobiology Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge to study the synaptic basis of visual processing in the retina. Previously a Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he now leads the Lagnado Lab at Sussex.

Lagnado's research examines neural circuits processing sensory information, emphasizing synapses in vision and mechanosensation. Key themes include synapses functioning as machines, their role in shaping visual signals in the retina and visual cortex, network adaptation mechanisms, inhibitory interneurons in computations such as motion anticipation, neuromodulator effects on synaptic function, and behavioural state influences on sensory processing. His lab uses zebrafish and mice, employing multiphoton microscopy, single-plane illumination microscopy, optogenetics, and computational approaches. He pioneered techniques for observing synaptic populations in the intact brain, advancing optophysiology and understanding of retinal circuit plasticity. Key publications include 'An amplitude code transmits information at a visual synapse' (James et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2019), 'A Retinal Circuit Generating a Dynamic Predictive Code for Oriented Features' (Johnston et al., Neuron, 2019), 'Ribbon synapses and visual processing in the retina' (Lagnado and Schmitz, Annual Review of Vision Science, 2015), and 'General features of the retinal connectome determine the computation of motion anticipation' (Johnston and Lagnado, eLife, 2015). Awards include the Wellcome Prize in Physiology (1998), Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and election as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2014).