Eleanor Maguire facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Eleanor Maguire
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Maguire in 2016
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| Born | 27 March 1970 Dublin, Ireland
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| Died | 4 January 2025 (aged 54) |
| Alma mater | University College Dublin (BA, PhD) University of Wales, Swansea (MSc) |
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| Thesis | Real-world spatial memory following temporal-lobe surgery in humans (1994) |
| Doctoral students | Demis Hassabis |
Eleanor Anne Maguire (born March 27, 1970 – died January 4, 2025) was a smart Irish scientist who studied the brain. She was a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. This means she researched how our brains help us think, learn, and remember. She was also a special research fellow there from 2007 until she passed away in 2025.
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Early Life and Education
Eleanor Maguire was born in Dublin, Ireland, on March 27, 1970. She first studied psychology at University College Dublin, getting her degree in 1990. Then, she learned about how the brain affects our minds at the University of Wales, Swansea, earning another degree in 1991.
She went back to University College Dublin for her PhD. This is where she became very interested in how our brains create memories. She worked with patients at a hospital and saw how brain injuries could affect memory. Her PhD paper in 1994 was about how people remember places in the real world after brain surgery.
Research and Career
Professor Maguire was a leading researcher at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. She was also the deputy director there. She led a special lab called the Memory and Space research laboratory. She was also an honorary member at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
How Our Brains Remember
Eleanor Maguire and her team found that many parts of the brain work together for episodic memory. This is the memory of your own personal experiences, like what you had for breakfast. This brain network also helps us find our way around and even imagine the future.
Her research aimed to understand how the same brain areas help with different tasks. She wanted to find out the basic ways our brains work for all these functions.
Studying the Brain
Her team used special brain scans called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These scans let them see the structure and activity of the brain. They also did tests with people and studied patients with memory problems.
They often used "real-life" experiments. For example, they used virtual reality to study how people navigate. They also looked at how people remember their past and imagine new events.
The Famous Taxi Driver Study
One of her most famous studies was with London taxi drivers. These drivers have to learn the entire layout of London. Professor Maguire found that a part of their brain called the hippocampus actually changed. It grew bigger as they learned more about the city.
This showed that our brains can change and adapt, which is called brain plasticity. This research was very interesting to other scientists and also to people all over the world.
Other Important Discoveries
Her team also showed that people with amnesia (severe memory loss) cannot imagine the future. This was seen as a big scientific breakthrough. They also found that they could "decode" people's memories. They did this by looking at brain activity patterns in the hippocampus using fMRI scans.
Professor Maguire was mainly interested in the hippocampus, which is key for learning and memory. She also studied other brain areas like the parahippocampal cortex and retrosplenial cortex. She taught many students, including Demis Hassabis, who later became famous for his work in artificial intelligence.
Public Engagement
Besides her scientific work, Professor Maguire loved sharing science with everyone. She gave public talks and visited schools. She also appeared on TV and radio. She even worked with artists to help people of all ages think about how important science is in their daily lives. In 2014, she gave a special talk at The Royal Institution.
Personal Life and Death
In her entry in Who's Who, Eleanor Maguire listed her hobbies as "Comedy lover, long-suffering supporter of Crystal Palace Football Club, [and] getting lost."
Eleanor Maguire passed away from cancer on January 4, 2025, when she was 54 years old.
Honours and Awards
Eleanor Maguire won many awards for her amazing contributions to science:
- 2003: The Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine. She won this for showing that the brains of London taxi drivers are more developed than others.
- 2008: The Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society.
- 2011: Feldberg Foundation Prize.
- 2012: Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award.
- 2012: IBRO-Kemali Prize.
- 2016: University College Dublin Alumnus of the Year in Research, Innovation and Impact.
She was also named one of 'Twenty Europeans who have changed our lives' by The European Union. In 2011, she became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci). In 2016, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
In 2017, she was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA). In 2018, she became a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).
See also
In Spanish: Eleanor Maguire para niños
