Dr Paul Dudchenko

I received my undergraduate degree in 1988 from the Ohio State University, where I majored in Psychology and minored in English.  I continued at Ohio State as a graduate student in the lab of Martin Sarter receiving my Ph.D. in 1993.  From 1993-1996, I worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Jeffery Taube at Dartmouth College, where I conducted studies on head direction cells and spatial cognition.  I continued my electrophysiological and behavioral work in the lab of Howard Eichenbaum at Boston University from 1996-1999.  There I examined the correlates of hippocampal neurons and the role of the hippocampus in olfactory and spatial memory.  I joined the Psychology at Stirling University as a lecturer (assistant professor) in 1999, and am now a senior lecturer.

I am interested in how animals form, maintain, and modify their "cognitive maps". These internal representations reflect the animal's outside world, and its experiences within that world.  My research focuses on the study of individual neurons which code the direction (termed head-direction cells) and neurons which code location in the environment (termed place cells).  Both of these types of cells are believed to contribute to cognitive mapping.  I am also interested in navigation, memory, and in how animals and humans get lost.

My Memory and Space Lab is situated within the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems at the University of Edinburgh.

My teaching focusses on how the brain works.   For first year students, I offer a set of lectures on the brain and its functions in Introductory Psychology (PSY911).  For second year students, I coordinate, together with Ronan O'Carroll, Brain and Behaviour: Clinical Perspectives (PSY9A4).  In this course I give lectures on the brain and Alzheimer's disease, and contribute to a laboratory practical on the autonomic nervous system.  In the final year, psychobiology is covered in the electives I teach (Why We Get Lost; A History of Psychology) and in the supervision of individual dissertation projects.

Dudchenko, P.A., Talpos, J., Young, J., Baxter, M.G. (2012) Animal models of working memory: A review of tasks that might be used in screening drug treatments for the memory impairments found in schizophrenia. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. In press,
doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.03.003

Bett, D., Wood, E.R., Dudchenko, P.A. (2012). The postsubiculum is necessary for spatial alternation, but not for homing by path integration.  Behavioral Neuroscience, in press.

Ainge, J.A., Tamosiunaite, M., Worgoter, F., and Dudchenko, P.A. Hippocampal place cells encode intended destination, and not a discriminative stimulus, in a conditional T-maze task.  Hippocampus (in press).

Dudchenko, P.A. (2010) Memory and a sense of direction.  Invited on-line commentary on European Journal of Neuroscience special issue: memory-and-a-sense-of-direction

Dudchenko, P.A. (2010) Why people get lost: the psychology and neuroscience of spatial cognition.  Oxford University Press, Oxford.

van der Meer, M., Richmond, Z., Braga, R.M., Wood, E.R., Dudchenko, P.A. (2010)  Evidence for the use of an internal sense of direction in homing. Behavioral Neuroscience, 124(1): 164-169.

Tamosiunaite, M., Ainge, J., Kulvicius, T., Porr, B., Dudchenko, P.A., and Worgotter, F. (2008) Path-finding in real and simulated rats: assessing the influence of path characteristics on navigation learning.   Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 25:562-582.

Ainge, J.A., Dudchenko, P.A., and Wood, E.R. (2008) Context-dependent firing of hippocampal place cells: does it underlie memory? In: Place cells and Hippocampal Memory, S. Mizumori (editor).

Dudchenko, P.A. (2007). Does shape matter?  A theoretical commentary on Jones et al. (2007).  Behavioral Neuroscience, 121(6): 1442-1446.

Ainge, J.A., Tamosiunaite, M., Woergoetter, F., and Dudchenko, P.A. (2007). Hippocampal CA1 place cells encode intended destination on a maze with multiple choice points.  Journal of Neuroscience, 27(36): 9769-9779. pdf

Dudchenko, P.A., and Zinyuk, L. (2005)  The formation of cognitive maps of adjacent environments: evidence from the head direction cell system. Behavioral Neuroscience, 119: 1511-1523. pdf

Dudchenko, P.A., and Bruce, C. (2005) Navigation without landmarks: can rats use a sense of direction to return to a home site?  Connection Science, 17: 107-125. pdf

Dudchenko, P.A., Muir, G., Frohardt, R., and Taube, J.S. (2005) What does the head direction system actually do?  In: Head Direction Cells and the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Directional Orientation, S.I. Wiener & J. S. Taube (Eds.) Chapter 11, pp. 221-245

Dudchenko, P.A. (2004)  An overview of the tasks used to test working memory in rodents.  Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 28: 699-709.  pdf

Dudchenko, P.A. The head direction system and navigation. (2003)  In: The Neurobiology of Spatial Behaviour, K. Jeffery (Ed.). Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Calton, J.L., Stackman, R.W., Goodridge, J.P., Archey, W.B., Dudchenko, P.A., and Taube, J.S. (2003)  Hippocampal place cell instability following lesions of the head direction cell network. Journal of Neuroscience, 23: 9719-9731.

Dudchenko, P.A., and Davidson, M. (2002).  Rats use a sense of direction to alternate on T-mazes located in adjacent rooms.  Animal Cognition, 5: 115-118.

Dudchenko, P.A. (2001)  How do animals actually solve the T-maze?  Behavioral Neuroscience, 115, 850-860.

Wood, E.R., Dudchenko, P.A., Robitsek, R.J., and Eichenbaum, H. (2000).  Hippocampal neurons encode information about different types of memory episodes occurring in the same location.  Neuron, 27: 623-633.

Dudchenko, P.A., Wood, E.R., and Eichenbaum, H. (2000).  Neurotoxic hippocampal lesions have no effect on odor span and little effect on odor recognition memory but produce significant impairments on spatial span, recognition, and alternation.  Journal of Neuroscience, 20: 2964-2977.

Wood, E.R., Dudchenko, P.A., and Eichenbaum, H. (1999).  The global record of memory in hippocampal neuronal activity.  Nature, 397, 613-616.

Unpublished working papers:

Zinyuk LE and Dudchenko PA.  Does a landmark near a head direction neuron's preferred firing direction exert more stimulus control than one farther away? PDF