Professor John Morley

• Biography
• Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise
• Grants / Current Projects
• Selected Publications
• Contact Details

Biography

Professor Morley's research has been mainly in the area of sensory neuroscience, in which he has investigated issues of neural coding in the somatosensory, visuomotor, and visual systems. He has substantial experience with in vivo electrophysiological recording, including multichannel data acquisition, and in vitro sharp electrode and patch clamp recording.

Most recently research in his laboratory has investigated the development of cortical and retinal visual neuroprostheses, functional plasticity in the cerebral cortex following disruption of sensory input, and the role of the protein dystrophin in CNS neurones (the protein that is absent in the condition Duchenne muscular dystrophy).

His research has attracted substantial funding support, and he is a chief investigator (with Professor Vaughan Macefield) on an ARC/NHMRC Thinking Systems program grant, and is a chief investigator on the recently awarded $42 million grant from the Federal Government to Bionic Vision Australia to develop a retinal prosthesis.

Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

• Sensory neuroscience
• Electrophysiology
  

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Grants / Current Projects

ARC/NHMRC Thinking Systems grant: Optimizing autonomous system control with brain-like hierarchical control systems

ARC Special Research Initiative: Bionic Vision Australia

NH&MRC project grant: The functional organisation and signals of motion sensitive neurons in the middle-temporal area of visual cortex

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Selected Publications

Kueh, S.L.L., Head, S.I. and Morley, J.W. (2011) Postsynaptic GABAA receptor number and enhanced gaboxadol induced change in holding currents in Purkinje cells in dystrophin-deficient mdx mice. Neurobiology of Disease, 43:558-564.

Abramian, M., Dokos, S., Lovell, N.H., Morley, J.W. and Suaning, G.J. (2011) Activation of retinal ganglion cells following epiretinal electrical stimulation with hexagonally-arranged bipolar electrodes. Journal of Neural Engineering, 8: 035004 (12pp)

Anderson, J.L., Morley, J.W. and Head, S.I. (2010) Enhanced late phase homosynaptic long term depression in cerebella Purkinje cells of the dystrophic mdx mouse. Muscle & Nerve 41(3):329-34.

Lovell, N.H., Morley, J.W., Chen, S.C., Hallum, L.E. and Suaning, G.J. (2010) Biological-machine systems integration: engineering the neural interface. Proceedings of the IEEE. 98(3):418-43

Tsai, D., Morley, J.W., Suaning, G.J and Lovell, N.H. (2009) Direct activation and temporal response properties of rabbit retinal ganglion cells following subretinal stimulation. Journal of Neurophysiology, 102: 2982-2993.

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