[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 94 (Monday, July 9, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7326-S7327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HONORING NOBEL LAUREATES

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, on July 18 here in Washington, the American 
College of Neuropsychopharmacology will be honoring its members who 
have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. The honorees 
include the three Nobel Prize winners from the year 2000: Dr. Arvid 
Carlsson from Goteborg University in Sweden, Dr. Paul Greengard from 
Rockefeller University in New York City, and Dr. Eric Kandel from 
Columbia University in New York City. Also being honored is the 1970 
Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Julius Axelrod from the National Institutes of 
Health in Maryland. Together, these Nobel Prize winners have helped us 
begin to understand how that most mysterious and important human organ, 
the brain, actually works.
  The brain is a huge collection of nerve cells, connected to each 
other in complicated networks. Nerve impulses, which are the means of 
communicating information from the brain to the various parts of the 
body, are conducted from one end of a nerve cell to another by a form 
of electrical action. Dr. Axelrod's work set the stage for our modern 
knowledge of brain neurochemistry by establishing the important role of 
neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that serve to transmit these 
nerve impulses from one nerve cell to another through a connecting 
region called the synapse. A key first step in understanding the brain 
was this discovery that, as nerve impulses move from nerve cell to 
nerve cell, they switch from an electrical conduction to a chemical 
conduction and then back again to an electrical conduction.
  Dr. Carlsson started to fill in this general outline by discovering 
that the chemical dopamine was one of these important chemicals that 
transmits nerve signals from one nerve cell to another. Moreover, 
dopamine seemed to be very important in controlling body motions. Dr. 
Carlsson's work with experimental animals who were deficient in 
dopamine led to the seminal discovery that Parkinson's disease in 
humans, a disabling and progressive disease associated with tremors and 
impaired mobility, was directly related to a deficiency of dopamine in 
certain parts of the brain. This landmark finding led directly to the 
treatment of Parkinson's disease with L-dopa, a drug that is converted 
to dopamine in the body. To this very day, the foundation for treatment 
of this illness is the use of medications that increase dopamine in the 
brain or mimic its action there.
  Dr. Carlsson also discovered that the drugs used to treat 
schizophrenia, a severe mental illness affecting thought processes, 
also seemed to work by affecting the action of dopamine in the

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brain. In contrast to the situation with Parkinson's disease, in which 
administration of L-dopa seemed to work by increasing dopamine in the 
brain, the antipsychotic drugs such as thorazine, which are used to 
treat schizophrenia, seemed to work by blocking the action of dopamine 
in the brain. To this very day, medications that block the effects of 
dopamine remain the mainstay of treatment for schizophrenia. Dr. 
Carlsson's work was instrumental in establishing the biological 
foundation of mental illness, which has led to our ability to target 
treatment of such disorders with medications based on their specific 
biochemical cause.
  Dr. Greengard carried this line of work one step further, examining 
exactly how such neurotransmitters work as they transfer nerve impulses 
from one nerve cell to another through the connecting region called the 
synapse. He described in detail the cascade of chemical reactions that 
occurs as the neurotransmitter chemicals stimulate the next nerve cell 
in the nerve pathway, which results in conversion of the nerve impulse 
back into an electrical signal. Particularly important was the 
discovery of the different speeds at which these nerve signals are 
transmitted across the synapse. This framework enabled him to 
establish, on a molecular and biochemical level, the mechanism of 
action of various drugs that act on the central nervous system.
  Finally, Dr. Kandel expanded the context of this research area by 
showing how such complex processes as memory and learning are directly 
related to the basic biochemical foundations outlined by Drs. 
Greengard, Carlsson, and Axelrod. In detailed studies in animals, Dr. 
Kandel showed that the process of memory was associated with specific 
changes in the shape and functioning of the synapse region that 
connects pairs of nerve cells. This research revealed that these 
connections between nerve cells, rather than being just passive 
junctions, are actually vitally important in the complicated processes 
of the nervous system.
  The brain could be said to be the ultimate human frontier. As 
scientists pieced together the function of all the other organs in the 
body over the last few centuries, the brain remained an enigma. The 
work of Drs. Axelrod, Carlsson, Greengard, and Kandel starts to clear 
away some of the mystery that surrounds the brain, and this research 
has already led to practical, clinical advances to help millions of 
people with neurological and mental disorders such as Parkinson's 
disease and schizophrenia. This basic understanding of how the brain 
works is clearly necessary for understanding of the numerous brain 
disorders that affect many more millions of people worldwide, some of 
which are just starting to be elucidated. Moreover, these pioneering 
studies have opened the door to the development of targeted medications 
to treat such illnesses. I am particularly excited about the 
possibility that this research will unlock the key to the medical 
treatment of substance abuse disorders, whose social impact in our 
country is enormous. On behalf of the many people who stand to live 
longer and more fulfilling lives as a result of their discoveries, I 
extend my deepest congratulations to these esteemed Nobel laureates.

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