Drs. Kandel and Greengard Honored with Nobel Prizes for Their Pioneering Research in Neuroscience

November 29, 2000 - Two of the three recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are leaders within the Borderline Personality Disorder Research Foundation (BPDRF). Dr. Eric R. Kandel, Member of the Board of Trustees and Chairperson of the BPDRF's Scientific Advisory Board and Dr. Paul Greengard, a BPDRF Member of the Board of Trustees, have both been recognized with science's most prestigious award for their pioneering research in the neurosciences. Drs. Kandel and Greengard join the BPDRF's Dr. Torsten Wiesel, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, as Nobel Laureates. Dr. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his research in neural basis of visual perception. With this unparalleled concentration of scientific excellence within the BPDRF, those who struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder have reason to feel reassurance and hope that prevention and treatment efforts will soon be developed based on the science sponsored by the BPDRF.

Dr. Steven Hyman, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Board of Trustees member of the BPDRF, asserted that the scientific achievements of this year's Nobel honorees "represent the platform on which we now stand to investigate the long-term changes in the nervous system that are at the heart not only of normal memory but also of many mental illnesses and the treatment for these illnesses" (New York Times, October 10, 2000).

Dr. Kandel of Columbia University has conducted seminal work in cellular changes that occur in learning and memory. Dr. Kandel has demonstrated, using a simple organism named the Aplysia, that changes in synapses (where two nerve cells in the nervous system meet) are central in learning and memory. Dr. Greengard Vincent Astor Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University, has studied how neurotransmitters such as dopamine influence the nervous system. Dopamine has been implicated in many disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

The BPDRF congratulates these scientists for their monumental scientific advances. For more information on these scientist's research and achievements visit the Nobel Foundation's web site.

- Eric A. Fertuck, Ph.D., BPDRF