Dr Tom Ridler

Tom is a neurophysiologist who is interested in how neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy produce changes to neuronal networks that ultimately affect cognitive processes. He uses both in vitro and in vivo electrophysiological methods to measure the activity of neurons, either at the level of single-cells or through large-scale neuronal networks. His work has focused on the medial entorhinal cortex, one of the first areas to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which is which is essential for processing spatial information.

Tom received an undergraduate masters (MSci) in ‘Neuroscience with study in industry’ from the University of Bristol, during which time he spent a year working at Eli Lilly on new drug targets for cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s and Schizophrenia. He moved to Exeter as a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Jon Brown and Prof Andrew Randall after which he took up a role as a postdoctoral researcher in the Exeter applied Neurophysiology group investigating entorhinal cortex dysfunction in rodent models of dementia. He was appointed associate lecturer in Neuroscience in 2020 and Lecturer in 2022.