Inaugural Lecture: Professor Johanna Montgomery

Date: 10 May 2023

Title: The nuts and bolts of what makes you tick,

In her inaugural lecture, Johanna described highlights of her plasticity research to date in both the brain and the heart.

Her research focusses on understanding the physiology of synapses in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Her laboratory combines electrophysiology, molecular biology, and imaging techniques to investigate how changes in synapse function could underlie developmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder. Her research also has a major focus beyond the brain to examine how neural plasticity contributes to abnormal heart rhythm, specifically atrial fibrillation and long QT syndrome. She currently holds a Royal Society James Cook Fellowship to support her research in neural plasticity in the human heart. Professor Johanna Montgomery completed her PhD in Physiology at the University of Otago NZ. She then performed six years of postdoctoral research at Stanford University USA where she gained her expertise in complex cellular electrophysiology techniques to examine plasticity of synapses in the brain. She then returned to New Zealand where she is Principal Investigator of the Synaptic Function Research Group in the Department of Physiology at the University of Auckland.