Roger Nicoll


Roger A. Nicoll is an American neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco where he is professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology. His research has contributed significantly to understanding synaptic physiology and pharmacology, particularly synaptic plasticity.

Biography

Nicoll was born, on January 15, 1941 to Canadian-born parents in Camden, and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father was a physicist at RCA. He was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age.

Education

He studied biology and chemistry at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, before shifting to medical studies at University of Rochester School of Medicine.
Following his second year at medical school, Nicoll joined National Institute of Mental Health Neurophysiology director Gian Salmoraghi's lab at St. Elizabeths Hospital, in Washington, D.C. to study electrophysiology for a year. After earning his M.D at Rochester in 1968, he interned at University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics.

Career

Following his internship, Nicoll returned to the National Institutes of Health as a researcher.
He obtained a position with the State University of New York in 1973, where he worked with John Eccles, whose book had influenced Nicoll's earlier decision to study using electrodes to record impulses from neurons. In 1975, he joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco.
His long-term research goal has been understanding how electrical activity re-configures brain connections. His work focuses on changes in nerve circuitry that may occur over time, a phenomenon known as plasticity, which has revealed new details of synaptic plasticity, and led contemporary knowledge of the basic mechanisms by which neurons communicate through neurotransmitters, in a process known as synaptic transmission.
Nicoll has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Physiology.

List of awards and honors