Edith Graef McGeer - Society for Neuroscience

336 Patrick L. McGeer and Edith GraefMcGeer
pursue this long-desired career. Therefore, we decided to quit duPont and
moved to Vancouver in June in order to get settled before medical school
began in the fall.
Medical School at the Daw^n of Neuroscience
When we moved to Vancouver in 1954, the Society for Neuroscience did not
exist. There was not even a field of neuroscience. There was no field of
neuropharmacology, no field of molecular neurobiology, and no field of
neurochemistry. Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology were well established,
but they operated as separate entities. Transmission between
neurons was presumed by teachers of neurophysiology to be electrical.
Watson and Crick had just reported on the structure of DNA but this had
not reached the teaching level, at least at UBC's medical school. Nucleic
acids were simply mysterious molecules.
Within the next decade, there was an explosion of scientific discoveries
about the operation of the brain. The foundations for neuropharmacology,
neurochemistry, and molecular neurobiology were established during this
period as well as their need for integration into the broader field of neuroscience.
The Society for Neuroscience was created in 1970 near the end of
this formative period. Part of its purpose was to promote such integration.
We were two of the few hundred who attended the initial neuroscience
meeting in Washington, DC in 1971. Pat was so impressed by the prospects
of the new society that he immediately organized a British Columbia chapter,
the first in Canada.
It is difficult to recreate the excitement of those formative years. A
mystery novel is boring for the reader who has already been thoroughly
briefed on the plot. However, to scientists confronted by the wall of ignorance
that existed at that time, the unfolding events had all the aspects of
a genuine thriller. The events began with the almost accidental discovery
of drugs with antipsychotic action. It was quickly observed that this action
was coupled with extrapyramidal side effects. In completely unrelated
investigations, it was found that the catecholamines and serotonin
occurred in unusually high concentrations in brain. Closure began when it
was found that the antipsychotics either blocked or depleted these amines.
Dopamine was the only amine to be highly localized in the striatum. Its
precursor L-DOPA was found to overcome the akinetic effects of reserpine.
Then it was discovered that dopamine was depleted in the striatum of
parkinsonian patients and that lesioning of the substantia nigra depleted
striatal dopamine. Meanwhile, neurophysiologists were developing intracellular
recording techniques that caused them to reject the notion
that neurotransmission in the central nervous system (CNS) was electrical.
Chemical messengers must exist. When Dahlstrom and Fuxe demonstrated
serotonin and catecholamine pathways in the CNS, the