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Sapolsky and his colleagues were among the first to document
that sustained stress could damage the hippocampus, a region of
the brain central to learning and memory. Their work has pinpointed
glucocorticoids, a class of steroid hormones secreted from the
adrenal gland during stress, as critical to such neurotoxicity.
Moreover, they were the first to demonstrate that glucocorticoids
will impair the capacity of hippocampal neurons (nerve cells)
to survive various neurological diseases, including stroke and
seizure. A major focus of the laboratory is to examine the cellular
and molecular events underlying hippocampal neuron death, and
to identify the components of such death worsened by glucocorticoids.
In addition, the Sapolsky laboratory is utilizing gene transfer
techniques to try to import genes into hippocampal neurons, both
in vivo and in vitro, in order to confer resistance to such neurological
diseases. The transfer is accomplished with the use of herpes
virus vectors, and such approaches are designed with the hope
of eventual clinical applicability.
For three months each year, Professor Sapolsky studies wild baboons
in the Serengeti of East Africa. He examines what a baboon's dominance
rank, social behavior and personality have to do with patterns
of stress-related diseases. Why do some bodies and some psyches
deal with stress better than others?
In his book, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," Sapolsky
investigates a critical fact: the body's physiological responses
are well adapted for dealing with short-term physical threats.
This stress-response is effective in a crisis, but can be very
detrimental if experienced on a continual basis. The problem is
that psychological stress triggers the same physiological
responses. The source of the stress is different, but the reaction
is the same. Psychological stress, if chronic, can lead to severe
health and performance problems including depression, ulcers,
colitis, heart disease and memory-loss. Sapolsky notes that our
stress-reactions are "generally short-sighted, inefficient,
and penny-wise and dollar-foolish."
Sapolsky received an A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in biological
anthropology from Harvard, and earned his Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology
from Rockefeller University in 1984. He has been awarded a MacArthur
Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Klingenstein
Fellowship in Neurosciences. He is the winner of the Young Investigator
of the Year awards from the Society for Neuroscience, the Biological
Psychiatry Society and the International Society of Psychoneuro-endocrinology.
He has received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young
Investigator Award and the Dean's Award for Teaching.
The Frontiers of Science lectures are presented two or three times
during the academic year by the University of Utah College of
Science. They feature eminent scientists who give public lectures
on current developments in their fields. The presentations are
free and open to the public.
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