The H.W. Magoun Lecture was instituted in 1989 as an annual lecture both to honor the BRI's founder, Dr. Horace (Tid) Magoun, and to recognize outstanding achievements by BRI members. The lecturer is selected by a faculty committee, which evaluates nominations from the membership at large.

The 22nd Annual H.W. Magoun Lecture, “Signaling Between Synapse and Nucleus During Neuronal Plasticity,” was presented on March 8, 2011, by Kelsey C. Martin, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Biological Chemistry, Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Eleanor Leslie Term Chair in Innovative Brain Research, Brain Research Institute, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Dr. Martin was selected as this year’s Magoun lecture for her extensive contributions to understanding the molecular basis of learning and memory. Kelsey’s discovery that synapse formation in aplysia is critically dependent upon the translation of specific messages at synapses is among the most important findings in the cell biology of learning and memory. In Lyles et al (2006), Kelsey’s group demonstrated that the small neuropeptide transmitter called sensorin is translated locally at synapses and plays a crucial role in synapse formation itself. The specificity of synapse formation is remarkable. While a given sensory neuron forms fascicles with processes of two different identified motor neurons, L7 and L10, it only forms synapses with L7. Accordingly, sensorin is only expressed in processes making synapses, arguing for the importance of specific synaptogenic signals in regulating sensorin expression. Kelsey and her colleagues showed that translation of sensorin occurred at synapses and that synapse-specific translation was essential for synapse formation. Remarkably, synapse formation is crucially dependent, not on sensorin protein per se, but upon newly synthesized sensorin. These studies argue that understanding the regulation of sensorin in more detail will provide fundamental insights into how messages are localized and translated selectively within synapses. Indeed, in work published in Science (Wang et al, 2009), Kelsey and her colleagues demonstrated different functions for the 5’ and 3’ regions of sensorin RNA, with the latter regulating localization to distal neuronal processes and the former conferring synapse-specific translation. Her studies demonstrate cell-type and neurotransmitter selective activation of translation at specific synapses. This is a truly exceptional contribution to the field.

Previous H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturers include:
First Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: William H. Oldendorf, M.D.
Second Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Arnold B. Scheibel, M.D.
Third Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Joaquin Fuster, M.D.
Fourth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Francisco Bezanilla, Ph.D.
Fifth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: John C. Liebeskind, Ph.D.
Sixth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Elizabeth F. Neufeld, Ph.D.
Seventh Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Enrico Stefani, M.D., Ph.D.
Eighth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Lutz Birnbaumer, Ph.D.
Ninth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Lawrence Kruger, Ph.D.
Tenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: William M. Pardridge, M.D. Eleventh Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: S. Lawrence Zipursky, Ph.D.
Twelfth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Debora Farber, Ph.D.
Thirteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Anthony Campagnoni, Ph.D. Fourteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Arthur P. Arnold, Ph.D. Fifteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Allan J. Tobin, Ph.D. Sixteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Jack L. Feldman, Ph.D. Seventeenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Jerome M. Siegel, Ph.D. Eighteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Richard W. Olsen, Ph.D.
Nineteenth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Diane M. Papazian, Ph.D.
Twentieth Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Michael S. Fanselow, Ph.D.
Twenty-First Annual H.W. Magoun Distinguished Lecturer: Ronald M. Harper, Ph.D.