Lecturer: Robert M. Sapolsky, professor of biological sciences and neuroscience,
Stanford University.
Date: Weds. March 26, 2003.
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Bldg. auditorium, University of Utah.

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.