[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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