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Arvid Carlsson
http://www.answers.com/topic/arvid-carlsson

Arvid Carlsson (b. January 25, 1923) is a Swedish scientist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects in Parkinson's disease. Carlsson won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 along with co-recipients Eric Kandel and Paul Greengard.

Carlsson was born in Uppsala, Sweden, son of Gottfrid Carlsson, historian and later professor of history at the Lund University, where he began his medical education in 1941. In 1944 he was participating in the task of examining prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, who Folke Bernadotte, a member of the royal Swedish family, had managed to bring to Sweden. Although Sweden was neutral during World War II, Carlsson's education was interrupted by several years of service in the Swedish Armed Forces. In 1951, he received his M.L. degree (the equivalent of the American M.D.) and his M.D. (the equivalent of the American Ph.D.). He then became a professor at the University of Lund. In 1959 he became a professor at the Göteborg University.

In 1957 Carlsson demonstrated that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in the brain and not just a precursor for norepinephrine, as had been previously believed.[1][2] He developed a method for measuring the amount of dopamine in brain tissues and found that dopamine levels in the basal ganglia, a brain area important for movement, were particularly high. Carlsson then showed that giving animals the drug reserpine caused a decrease in dopamine levels and a loss of movement control. These effects were similar to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. By administering to these animals L-Dopa, which is the precursor of dopamine, he could alleviate the symptoms. These findings led other doctors to try using L-Dopa on patients with Parkinson's disease, and found it to alleviate some of the symptoms in the early stages of the disease. L-Dopa is still the basis for most commonly used means of treating Parkinson's disease.


References
^ Carlsson A, Lindqvist M, Magnusson T (1957). "3,4-Dihydroxyphenylalanine and 5-hydroxytryptophan as reserpine antagonists". Nature 180 (4596): 1200. PMID 13483658.
^ Abbott A (2007). "Neuroscience: the molecular wake-up call". Nature 447 (7143): 368-70. DOI:10.1038/447368a. PMID 17522649. free full text
Les Prix Nobel. 2001. The Nobel Prizes 2000, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, Nobel Foundation: Stockholm.

External links
Nobel Prize Biography

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http://mail.psychedelic-library.org/pipermail/theharderstuff/20070524/003230.html

this is a free site -
if you try the other you will have to cough up the bucks?

Neuroscience: The molecular wake-up call

Alison Abbott is Nature's senior European correspondent.

Abstract

It is 50 years since Arvid Carlsson showed
dopamine to be a neurotransmitter. Alison Abbott
profiles a chemical and its champion.
NeuroscienceThe molecular wake-up call

T. MAGNUSSON

Catatonic rabbits were revived by dopamine in a
1957 experiment led by Arvid Carlsson.

They were conscious but you wouldn't know it:
able to perceive the world around them but
powerless to look around, sniff the air or to cry
out. So when the young scientist injected them
with a chemical called L-dopa, he witnessed what
seemed to be a miracle. They stirred, opened
their eyes and began roaming around as if nothing had happened.

This may sound familiar from the book Awakenings1
— the true story of how, in 1963, the neurologist
Oliver Sacks used L-dopa to spectacularly revive
patients with sleeping sickness who had been
'frozen', speechless and motionless, for more
than 40 years. But the unwritten and equally
startling prequel took place in Lund, Sweden,
several years earlier. The protagonists were
rabbits; their saviour a young Swedish pharmacologist called Arvid Carlsson.

In his experiment, Carlsson showed that dopamine
— the chemical manufactured from levodopa, or
L-dopa — acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain,
passing signals between neighbouring neurons.
Injection of L-dopa restored the propagation of
electrical signals in the brains of rabbits that
had been rendered catatonic, allowing the animals
to move. But the pharmacological establishment
was scornful of Carlsson's claim. At a London
meeting in 1960, the foremost experts in neural
transmission made it clear that they didn't
believe him — dopamine was thought to be the
metabolite of another neurotransmitter rather than one in its own right.

Within years the critics were silenced. Dopamine
was shown to be a pivotal chemical in the neural
circuits that drive pleasure and addiction, as
well as in illnesses such as Parkinson's disease,
for which L-dopa quickly became a first-line
treatment. It remains so today. In 2000, Carlsson
shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine
for his discovery. And next week neuroscientists
will gather at a meeting in Carlsson's home town
of Gothenburg, Sweden, to celebrate the 50th
anniversary of his formative paper on the awakened rabbits2.

During the past half century, Carlsson and
dopamine have followed intertwined paths.
Researchers now understand that the way dopamine
works is subtle and complex, and its mechanisms
of action are central to the function of many
neurological and psychiatric drugs. And Carlsson,
now a sprightly 84-year-old, still spends hours
pondering the mysteries of brain chemistry.

But
he feels marginalized in Gothenburg and, last
year, the institute established in his name
closed prematurely after bitter feuds about funding.