Three neurology experts receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine

2000/10/10 Carton Virto, Eider - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Medikuntza
• Historia

Awarded this year A. Carlsson, P. Greengard and E. They have been candles.

Neurotransmitters are chemical compounds that carry the electrical signal, that is, the information, between nerve cells and their work is fundamental for the functioning of the brain. The information passes from the cell to the cell through the so-called synapses, but each cell can contain thousands of sites. We therefore have an extremely complex network in the brain. This year's Nobel Prizes have analyzed some of these broadcasts, which are slow synaptic transmissions. Research has served to know the functioning of the brain and understand the basis of certain neurological and psychic diseases.

Arvid Carlsson discovered in the 1950s that dopamine was a very powerful neurotransmitter. He later discovered the importance of dopamine in the control of movements and opened the way to prepare the drug against Parkinson. People with Parkinson's have damaged nerve cells that produce dopamine and therefore have tremors, stiffness, and inability to control muscle movement. Carlsson, while clarifying the role of dopamine in the brain, determines how drugs work to treat schizophrenia and allows antidepressant treatments.

After Carlsson's work, Greengard revealed in the 1960s how dopamine and other transmitters worked. These compounds are responsible, among others, for humour, language, movements and sensory perception. Thanks to the work of Greengard we have been able to verify that the neurotransmitters provoke a chain reaction in the cells and establish a succession of these reactions.

Eric Kandel has worked especially in the field of memory. On the one hand, it has discovered the mechanisms involved in the construction of memory, and has explained the basic neuronal changes that occur in the learning process, and on the other, that the short-term and long-term memory is constructed through different mechanisms.

He began to investigate the mammal candles, but due to its excessive complexity he addressed the marine hares. However, some discoveries in marine hares will also serve humans. For example, there are the jobs being done to find drugs against certain types of dementia.