Jonathan Whitlock

Jonathan Whitlock, Ph.D, (born 1977) obtained a doctorate in neuroscience in the United States, and is currently doing post-doctoral research at a lab located in Trondheim, Norway.
By using biochemical markers that are selective for LTP, DR. Whitlock has obtained evidence that one-trial, inhibitory avoidance learning induces Long-Term Potentiation (LTP). He is attempting to confirm this finding with electrophysiological methods.
In 2006, Dr. Whitlock and colleagues reported on a series of experiments that provided perhaps the strongest evidence of LTP's role in behavioral memory, arguing that to conclude that LTP underlies behavioral learning, the two processes must both mimic and occlude one another. Employing an inhibitory avoidance learning paradigm, researchers trained rats in a two-chambered apparatus with light and dark chambers, the latter being fitted with a device that delivered a foot shock to the rat upon entry. An analysis of CA1 hippocampal synapses revealed that inhibitory avoidance training induced in vivo AMPA receptor phosphorylation of the same type as that seen in LTP in vitro; that is, inhibitory avoidance training mimicked LTP. In addition, synapses potentiated during training could not be further potentiated by experimental manipulations that would have otherwise induced LTP; that is, inhibitory avoidance training occluded LTP. In a response to the article, Timothy Bliss and colleagues remarked that these and related experiments "substantially advance the case for LTP as a neural mechanism for memory."

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