Patricia Goldman-Rakic

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Patricia Goldman-Rakic

Patricia Goldman-Rakic , née Shoer (born April 22, 1937 in Salem , Massachusetts , † July 31, 2003 in Hamden , Connecticut ) was an American neuroscientist . She made fundamental discoveries about the neural basis of higher cognitive functions in the prefrontal cortex and neocortex .

Life

Goldman-Rakic ​​graduated from Vassar College with a bachelor's degree cum laude in 1959 and received his PhD in neuropsychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1963 with Wendell Jeffrey. She then went to UCLA and New York University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City as a post-doctoral student before joining the National Institute of Mental Health in 1965, where she headed the Developmental Neurobiology Department.

From 1979 she was a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, most recently as Eugene Higgins Professor of Neuroscience in the Faculty of Neurobiology. She died in 2003, two days after being hit by a car on the street.

Since 1979 she was married to the neurobiologist Paško Rakić , who also taught at Yale and with whom she worked. Her sisters Linda Shoer and Ruth Rappaport (her twin sister) are also scientists.

plant

Goldman-Rakic ​​investigated the function of the forehead region of the brain, in which higher cognitive functions are located , from the mid-1960s . She was a pioneer in this area at the time, as most neuroscientists were concerned with the more easily investigated sensory cortex. She found that the neurons in the prefrontal cortex are also connected in column arrangements, which was previously only known from sensory regions ( David Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel in the primary visual cortex, Vernon Mountcastle in the somatosensory region).

After the prefrontal cortex, she and her group turned to other areas of the neocortex in the 1980s. With her group, she investigated the complex interconnection in these higher regions of the cortex over longer distances, both within the cortex and, for example, via the basal ganglia . She pursued a strongly interdisciplinary research approach that included psychological (behavioral research), anatomical, electrophysiological, pharmacological and biochemical approaches.

Goldman-Rakic ​​examined working memory and its location in the prefrontal cortex in particular in an animal model . She succeeded in identifying different groups of neurons that are involved in a reproducible manner. She also found out in the 1970s that cells with dopamine as a neurotransmitter in particular play a role there. According to Goldman-Rakic, this is also important for explaining the causes and symptoms of schizophrenia and treating them with drugs that act on the dopamine system. Their findings also had implications for understanding other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ADHD. Together with colleagues, she identified the protein calcyon (DRD1IP) as a possible drug approach for nerve cells with reduced sensitivity to dopamine.

She published over 300 scientific papers.

Honors, editorial work and memberships

She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (and its Institute of Medicine) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1996 she received the Karl Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society, the Leiber Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Fyssen Foundation Prize in Neuroscience, the W. Alden Spencer Award from Columbia University in 1982 , the Pasarow Award in 1992 and the 2002 Ralph W. Gerard Prize . Goldman-Rakic ​​received honorary doctorates from the University of Utrecht (2000) and St. Andrews. She was president of the Society for Neuroscience from 1989 to 1990. She was the founding editor of the journal Cerebral Cortex and served on the editorial boards of Science, Behavioral Brain Research and Advances in Neuroscience, among others.

literature

  • Amy Arnsten: Patricia Goldman-Rakic, a remembrance , Neuron, Volume 40, 2003, pp. 465-470

Fonts

  • Regional and cellular fractionation of working memory , Proc. Nat. Acad., Vol. 93, 1996, pp. 13473-13480

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ N. Lezcano, L. Marzljak, S. Eubanks, R. Levenson, P. Goldman-Rakic, C. Bergson Dual signaling regulated by calcyon, a D1 dopamine receptor interacting protein , Science, Volume 287, 2000, p. 1660– 1664
personal data
SURNAME Goldman-Rakic, Patricia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Salem , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 2003
Place of death Hamden , Connecticut