Download PDF - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

More documents

Recommendations

Info

18 h h m i b u l l e t i n | May 2o11
Charting new waters The same daring spirit drives Mark Bear to win sailboat races and to craft treatments for fragile X syndrome. by madeline drexler The Laser is not built for leisurely sailing. With a sleek hull just under 14 feet long, a tall mast, simple sail, and minimal controls, this craft has one purpose: to race. The singular helmsman—almost always a “he” because of the physical demands—must scramble, in a race on high seas, from one side of the craft to the other, suspend himself outboard straight-legged against a stiff wind, and torque his body in response to every wave. Since all Lasers are structurally identical, winning or losing lies entirely in his hands. Mark Bear—a champion helmsman and neuroscientist at the Massachusetts <strong>Institute</strong> of Technology—says he applies the same principles to racing and research. “You begin with probabilities. You don’t know a priori whether heading off to the left side of the racecourse or the right is the way to go. So you collect information, make observations, test hypotheses. You do a few pilot experiments, sailing upwind a little in either direction, to see what looks promising. You make a plan, and take measurements of whether or not the plan is working. If you made a wrong guess, you make on-course corrections. “But what really separates great sailors from less great sailors,” adds the HHMI investigator, “is that they see things that other people don’t.” He should know. On the water, in a boat inaptly named “Fat Bastard,” Bear has won the U.S. Masters National Championship and the New England Championship. In the lab, he’s challenged reigning dogmas in neuroscience. Over a quarter century, Bear has tacked toward elusive problems in his field. His main obsession has been brain plasticity: the process by which neurons change in response to experience. Early on, he explored neural connections in the hippocampus, which plays a key role in long-term memory and spatial navigation. Controversially, he used these findings as a model for a very different part of the brain, the visual cortex. More recently, Bear has applied his discoveries in brain plasticity to understanding fragile X syndrome, an inherited form of mental impairment. He has described surprising mechanisms underlying fragile X and has shepherded a promising treatment through phase 2 photographs by jeff barnett-winsby May 2o11 | h h m i b u l l e t i n 19
Page 1 and 2: M AY ’11 VOL.24 • NO.02 RESEARC
Page 3 and 4: may ’11 vol. 24 · no. o2 12 18 a
Page 5 and 6: president’s letter Learn, Show, a
Page 7 and 8: Science History as Art Andrew Cutra
Page 9 and 10: upfront 08 A Crowd in the Kitchen A
Page 11 and 12: Pietari Posti But was it structural
Page 13: For more than two bILLION years on
Page 17 and 18: Clinicians would like better altern
Page 19: Clockwise from left: Matt Warman ta
Page 23 and 24: In his research on brain plasticity
Page 25 and 26: excessive neural connectivity, exce
Page 27 and 28: 42 2000 average age that scientists
Page 29 and 30: 43,000 to 89,000 postdocs. That inc
Page 31 and 32: “AT FIRST, IT’S REALLY fun,”
Page 34 and 35: are, you know someone with high cho
Page 36 and 37: perspectives & opinions Shirley Til
Page 38 and 39: Q & A What do you wish you had know
Page 40 and 41: science education Industrial-Streng
Page 42 and 43: institute news Kotak Elected HHMI V
Page 44 and 45: lab book The Pace of Evolution A cl
Page 46 and 47: lab book Nourishing Neural Stem Cel
Page 48 and 49: nota bene spotlight Wiley Prize Goe
Page 50 and 51: continued from page 17 (bone’s ba
Page 52: 4000 Jones Bridge Road Chevy Chase,

Download PDF - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?