Professor Ole Paulsen
Principal Investigator, Chair of Physiology (1883), Fellow St John's College
Biography
Ole Paulsen gained a medical degree and a doctorate from the University of Oslo, Norway, before taking up a Departmental Lecturership in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford, in 1994.
During the years 1996-99, he was also a Junior Research Fellow at Wadham College. He was appointed University Lecturer in the University Laboratory of Physiology in 2000, associated with a Fellowship at Keble College.
In January 2010 Ole accepted the Chair of Physiology (1883) in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.
Research
The overall aim of Ole's research programme is to understand how the cortex of the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. Cortical neural activity displays characteristic rhythmic patterns, reflected in the human electroencephalogram as behavioural state-dependent oscillations in different frequency bands. By organising spikes into specific temporal structures, network oscillations are conducive to spike timing-dependent synaptic plasticity, a leading candidate cellular mechanism underlying memory formation.
Ole's lab aims to understand the relation between network oscillations and synaptic plasticity in the cortex, and how these temporal structures optimize encoding and retrieval of information. To achieve this aim, his research follows three main strands, as described in the following.
Publications
The 25 most recent of 134. All the group’s papers.
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A human corticospinal organoid-slice connectoid model informs enhancer strategies for post-injury axon regrowth
Cell Rep 45, 117399 (2026).
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Determining the molecular and physiological actions of subtype-selective nanobodies of GABAA receptors
Sci Adv 12, eaeg3548 (2026).
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NeuroSuite for Long-Term Functional and Structural Studies of Air-Liquid Interface Cerebral Organoids
Adv Sci (Weinh) e19893 (2026).
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Long-term potentiation in the brain: a synaptic memory mechanism
Physiol Rev 106, 2473-2520 (2026).
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Homophilic wiring principles underpin neuronal network topology in vitro
Elife 14, e85300 (2025).
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Layer 1 NDNF interneurons form distinct subpopulations with opposite activation patterns during sleep in freely behaving mice
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 122, e2503139122 (2025).
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PseudoSorter: A self-supervised spike sorting approach applied to reveal Tau-induced reductions in neuronal activity
Sci Adv 11, eadr4155 (2025).
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Dopamine increases protein synthesis in hippocampal neurons enabling dopamine-dependent LTP
Elife 13, RP100822 (2025).
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Machine learning predicts distinct biotypes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Eur J Hum Genet 33, 1290-1299 (2025).
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Characterization of novel human endogenous retrovirus structures on chromosomes 6 and 7
Front Genet 16, 1498978 (2025).
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Endogenous retroviruses are dysregulated in ALS
iScience 27, 110147 (2024).
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MEA-NAP: A flexible network analysis pipeline for neuronal 2D and 3D organoid multielectrode recordings
Cell Rep Methods 4, 100901 (2024).
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Postsynaptic burst reactivation of hippocampal neurons enables associative plasticity of temporally discontiguous inputs
Elife 11, e81071 (2022).
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Modulation of hippocampal plasticity in learning and memory
Curr Opin Neurobiol 75, 102558 (2022).
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Different encoding of reward location in dorsal and intermediate hippocampus
Curr Biol 32, 834-841.e5 (2022).
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Differential vulnerability of hippocampal CA3-CA1 synapses to Aβ
Acta Neuropathol Commun 10, 45 (2022).
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The functional role of sequentially neuromodulated synaptic plasticity in behavioural learning
PLoS Comput Biol 17, e1009017 (2021).
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An emergent neural coactivity code for dynamic memory
Nat Neurosci 24, 694-704 (2021).
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Thalamus mediates neocortical Down state transition via GABAB-receptor-targeting interneurons
Neuron 109, 2682-2690.e5 (2021).
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Cholinergic modulation of Up-Down states in the mouse medial entorhinal cortex in vitro
Eur J Neurosci 53, 1378-1393 (2021).
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Impaired spatial learning and suppression of sharp wave ripples by cholinergic activation at the goal location
Elife 10, e65998 (2021).
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OptoGenie: an open-source device for the optogenetic stimulation of cells
Journal of Open Hardware (2021).
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Human ALS/FTD brain organoid slice cultures display distinct early astrocyte and targetable neuronal pathology
Nat Neurosci 24, 1542-1554 (2021).
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Neuromodulation of Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity: Past, Present, and Future
Neuron 103, 563-581 (2019).
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Cerebral organoids at the air-liquid interface generate diverse nerve tracts with functional output
Nat Neurosci 22, 669-679 (2019).