Biography
Prof Magill is Professor of Neurobiology, Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) Co-Investigator, and Director of the MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit at the University of Oxford. He is also founding Director of the MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Restorative Neural Dynamics. Prof Magill’s research is focused on elucidating the operational principles of the basal ganglia and partner brain circuits in both health and neurodegenerative conditions. He and his team have pioneered the use of animal models to identify the molecular, cellular and circuit mechanisms that underlie moment-to-moment fluctuations of nerve cell activity in the brain in vivo and how these go awry in Parkinson’s. Their work has helped explain how disturbed brain rhythms arise in Parkinson’s and cause movement difficulties, how different nerve cell types fulfil specialised functions to control complex behaviour, and how the signalling of the most vulnerable nerve cells in Parkinson’s is altered in the living brain by diverse disease burdens.