The amygdala was just so strong. It was a defining kind of moment because it just showed how much these pathways were important for cognition and emotion and the two could not be separated. And so it's really the data that were kind of screaming at me. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe and we are in the middle of a scientific revolution to understand its inner workings. Join us for a conversation with world-renowned neuroscientists as they visit Rochester.
I am Dr. John Foxe, Director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester and you are listening to Neuroscience Prospectives. I'm John Fox. I'm the Director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester and it is an absolute pleasure today to have one of the true giants in the field of neuroanatomy and neuroscience here with us in Rochester, Professor Helen Barbas from Boston University. What took you to graduate school?
Was it there that you got fascinated by the brain or was there a signature moment? I was actually quite naive when I came to study. I got a Fulbright Scholarship and they did send me to Kean College because I thought that I was interested in people who has brain disorders and children with disabilities and so forth and that was a good place for that.
And I learned more and more that I was much more interested in the brain as we got to know more about the brain and to make the long story short I ended up at McGill later on and became much more hardcore in the neuroscience from the neurophysiology perspective at the beginning. Well, let's back up actually. I mean you got this Fulbright Scholarship but tell us a little bit about where you came from and what brought you to the United States.
I came from Cyprus and so there was an American consulate there and they had the Fulbright program and they had some scholarships and it was the same for undergraduates, people going for undergraduate studies and graduate studies and I was one of a lot of people who competed when they ended up being nine in the end but that was probably more than a year of tests that at each stage they eliminated quite a few people. It was quite intimidating but when you're 17 you sort of go with the flow.
Right and I mean it's thinking about a 17 year old young lady in Cyprus heading off to the United States it does sound intimidating. Did you think when you were leaving then that you would spend the rest of your career in the United States? No, no and certainly my mother didn't.
Sure. So but it got deeper and deeper into it and after a while it is the States is one of very few places where you can do this type of work and Boston is one of a few places and maybe Rochester too and Penn and New York where you can do primate work and ultimately work with humans. Yeah and why anatomy? You're really a hardcore anatomist. What drew you to that?
When I was in graduate school I was doing neurophysiology and I was working with different animal models and cats and some of the questions that emerged from that could be addressed best at the level of circuits and at the anatomical level. So I wanted to come to the States and acquire some background in that field and then go back to physiology which everybody thinks is more exciting and so forth.
And then I got hooked because I started seeing patterns and it was solving problems that I couldn't really do as well in physiology and with the methods that we had at the time it wasn't really possible. So it was really the field that fascinated me and what you could do with so much complexity. And you're extremely well known as well for venturing up to the front of the brain, right?
There's a lot of anatomy and fundamental sensory cortices but you got stuck in what was considered very difficult territory. Right and at that time I was interested in eye movements and what really was important for eye movements proprioceptive information. And so people who knew that I was studying the frontal eye fields they say why are you studying that area? It's neither necessary nor sufficient for eye movements.
My answer was perhaps the right question is what is their role in eye movement? And at that point there was quite a bit of increase in activity that people found that when an animal, a monkey in this case, was trained in a visual task the receptive fields in the frontal eye fields which are very large were enhanced when the animal made a saccade towards the receptive field. So it was purposive. It had to do with the task.
And so it was at the time when I was studying the visual input to that so the people who were studying the frontal eye fields became very intrigued with that. So it was the first demonstration of the visual input to the frontal eye fields. Yeah superb, superb. It was amazing work. And then it's funny you started by saying that you came to, you know, with an eye towards clinical conditions, autism and developmental disabilities and then sort of quickly turned to anatomy.
But in more recent years now your work has turned to the emotional circuits and you've come back to thinking about psychiatric neurodevelopmental diseases as a funny circular or tour de force really. Would you like to speak a bit about what brought you back into that domain? Yes, well the data always speak and when I started going outside the frontal eye fields and the lateral prefrontal areas where we could see these very primary sensory connections, they went to the orbital frontal cortex.
The amygdala was just so strong. It was a defining kind of moment because it just showed how much these pathways were important for cognition and emotion and the two could not be separated. And so it's really the data that they were kind of screaming at me. Change of direction actually. You have really in some ways your career is unusual because in our field people often move from institution to institution but you've been at Boston University for really most of your career, is that the case?
Yes, yes and one of the reasons is because it's a good place. There are a lot of people who work in that area but once you start a lab like that and you go from the system to the synapse you're kind of tethered. You really develop a lab. You start from the ground up. And anything that takes time away I don't like. It's downtime and sometimes it's moving. It's quite disruptive. And it's not always the best way to get ahead. Sometimes it's better to just hop around.
I just would not like losing time. Life in Boston has been good to you. Life in Boston, yes. Boston was always a good place to go after Montreal. And a great science town and a great neuroscience town. Yes, yes. Absolutely great community there. You're a trailblazer as a woman in science as well and a lot of the folks who watch this segment that we do are young women in science. Do you have words of wisdom for them about what it means to be a woman in science?
Things that are guiding principles for you? Yes, I think that we learn how to persist in spite of all the drawbacks. Helen, it's such a pleasure to get to spend some time with you and to catch up with you. Just to express my congratulations and appreciation for your long career in anatomy and the long reach and penetration of the work that you've done. It's really laid a foundation for a lot of us working in the field. Great to have you here. Thank you.