Patricia Goldman-Rakic

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

Life

Goldman - Rakic ​​studied psychology at Vassar College with a Bachelor 's degree cum laude in 1959 and 1963 at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA), a doctorate in neuropsychology at Wendell Jeffrey. After that, she was at UCLA and New York University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City as a post- graduate student before 1965 at the National Institute of Mental Health went where she headed the department of developmental neurobiology. From 1979 she was a professor at Yale University School of Medicine, most recently as Eugene Higgins Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Neurobiology. She died in 2003, two days after she was approached on the street by a car.

She was married since 1979 to the neurobiologists Paško Rakic ​​, who also taught at Yale and with whom she worked. Her sisters Linda and Ruth Rappaport Shoer ( her twin sister ) are also scientists.

Work

Goldman - Rakic ​​examined from the mid- 1960s, the function of the frontal region of the brain where higher cognitive functions are located. In this area, they then had a pioneering role, as most neuroscientists is concerned with the easier to be examined sensory cortices. She found that the neurons in the prefrontal cortex are connected in column arrangements, which was known only from sensory regions previously (David Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel in the primary visual cortex, Vernon Mountcastle in the somatosensory region). After the prefrontal cortex, she turned with her group in the 1980s also other areas of the neocortex. With her ​​group, she examined the complex interconnection in these higher regions of the cortex over long distances, both within the cortex as well as of the basal ganglia. She pursued a highly interdisciplinary research approach that included, among other psychological ( behavioral research ), anatomical, electrophysiological, pharmacological and biochemical approaches.

Goldman - Rakic ​​investigated in animal models and in particular the working memory and its localization in the prefrontal cortex. She managed in a reproducible manner, the identification of different groups of neurons that are involved in it and they took place in the 1970s, that particular cells play with dopamine as a neurotransmitter, a role, which is also important for the explanation of the causes and symptoms of schizophrenia and by Goldman - Rakic has their treatment with drugs acting on the dopamine system. Their findings also had implications for other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and attention deficit disorder. She identified the protein with peers Calcyon ( DRD1IP ) as a possible approach to drugs in nerve cells with reduced sensitivity to dopamine.

She has published over 300 scientific papers.

Honors, publishing activities 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 was awarded the Karl Lashley Award of the American Philosophical Society, the bodies Award of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Fyssen Foundation Prize in Neuroscience, the Alden Spencer Award from Columbia University and the 2002 Ralph W. Gerard Prize. Goldman - Rakic ​​was honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht (2000 ) and St. Andrews. She was 1989-1990 President of the Society for Neuroscience. She was a founding editor of the journal Cerebral Cortex and was the editorial board, for example, of Science, Behavioral Brain Research and Advances in Neuroscience.