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lou_lou · 08-08-2008, 06:08 PM

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.