FAQ/Help |
Calendar |
Search |
Today's Posts |
|
08-08-2008, 06:08 PM | #1 | |||
|
||||
In Remembrance
|
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.
__________________
with much love, lou_lou . . by . , on Flickr pd documentary - part 2 and 3 . . Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these. |
|||
Reply With Quote |
Reply |
|
|