Timothy Bliss facts for kids

Timothy Vivian Pelham Bliss, born on July 27, 1940, is a British scientist who studies the brain. He is known as a neuroscientist, which means he researches how our brains work. He has worked at University College London and the Francis Crick Institute in London.

In 2016, Professor Tim Bliss, along with Professors Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris, won the Brain Prize. This award is one of the most important science prizes in the world. They won it for their amazing discoveries about how our brains learn and remember things.

Early Life and Education

Tim Bliss was born in England. He went to Dean Close School and later studied at McGill University in Canada. He earned his first degree in 1963 and his PhD in 1967.

In 1967, he started working at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London. From 1988 to 2006, he was the head of the Neurophysiology Division there.

Discovering How Memories Form

In the late 1960s, Tim Bliss worked with another scientist named Terje Lømo in Norway. They made a very important discovery about how our brains store memories. They found something called long-term potentiation (LTP).

What is Long-Term Potentiation?

Imagine your brain is like a huge network of tiny wires called neurons. When you learn something new, these neurons send signals to each other. LTP is like a special way these connections get stronger and last a long time.

In 1973, Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo published their findings. They showed that if you give a quick, strong burst of signals to certain brain cells, the connection between them becomes much stronger. This stronger connection can last for hours, days, or even longer. This is how your brain might remember things for a long time!

Studying the Hippocampus

Tim Bliss did a lot of his research on a part of the brain called the hippocampus. This area is super important for forming new memories. He showed that LTP happens in the hippocampus, which helped explain how learning and memory work at a tiny, cellular level.

Most of Tim's research on LTP and memory happened at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. He worked there from 1968 to 2006. He is also a visiting professor at University College London.

From 2009 to 2013, Professor Bliss also worked as a professor at Seoul National University in South Korea.

Awards and Special Recognition

Professor Tim Bliss has received many awards for his important work. Here are some of them:

• 1991: Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Neuroscience
• 1994: Feldberg Prize
• 1994: He became a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
• 1998: He became a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
• 2003: Annual Award for Contributions to British Neuroscience.
• 2012: He gave the Croonian Prize Lecture for the Royal Society. This is a very old and important lecture in biology.
• 2013: Ipsen Prize for Neuronal Plasticity.
• 2016: The Brain Prize, which he shared with two other scientists.

Important Research Papers

Tim Bliss has written many important scientific papers. These papers share his discoveries with other scientists around the world. Here are a few examples of his early work:

• 1969: "Lamellar Organization of Hippocampal Excitatory Pathways"
• 1970: "Plasticity in a Monosynaptic Cortical Pathway"
• 1971: "Long-Lasting Increases of Synaptic Influence in the Unanesthetized Hippocampus"
• 1973: "Long-Lasting Potentiation of Synaptic Transmission in the Dentate Area of the Anaesthetized Rabbit Following Stimulation of the Perforant Path"