Dr. Lori McMahon

Dr. McMahon was appointed as Vice President of Research at the University of Virginia in June of 2024 and reports directly to the Provost. She previously served at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2021 as Professor of Neuroscience and as the Vice President for Research. She has been investigating various mechanisms that modulate synaptic function and plasticity at hippocampal synapses in rodent models over the lifespan in health and disease for 20 years. She is an expert synaptic physiologist and her lab uses electrophysiological approaches in acute brain slices, including extracellular dendritic field potential recordings, population spike recordings, and whole-cell voltage and current clamp recordings, to measure cell excitability, synaptic transmission and plasticity. She has experience investigating synaptic transmission in all hippocampal subfields, many areas of cortex, and dorsal striatum. Her lab also has extensive expertise in protein measurement using Western blot, immunohistochemical staining and confocal imaging, hippocampal behavioral assays, stereotaxic surgery for drug administration, to complement the synaptic physiology.