Ann Graybiel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ann Martin Graybiel
|
|
|---|---|
Graybiel receives the Medal of Science from President Bush in 2001
|
|
| Born | 1942 Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
|
| Alma mater |
|
| Occupation | Neuroscientist |
| Known for |
|
| Awards |
|
Ann Martin Graybiel (born in 1942) is a very important scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is a professor and researcher who studies the brain. She is an expert on a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Her work helps us understand how we form habits, learn new things without even trying (this is called implicit learning), and how brain problems like Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and obsessive–compulsive disorder happen.
Understanding the Brain
For most of her career, Dr. Graybiel has studied a part of the brain called the striatum. The striatum is part of the basal ganglia, which helps control how we move, think, form habits, and make decisions.
In the late 1970s, Dr. Graybiel made an amazing discovery. She found that the cells in the striatum, which looked like a messy group, were actually organized into tiny chemical sections. She called these sections striosomes. Later, other research showed that problems with striosomes are linked to brain disorders. For example, they are connected to mood problems in Huntington's disease and to low levels of dopamine (a brain chemical) in Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Graybiel's later research showed how the organized parts of the striatum are connected to thinking, learning, and forming habits. She found that brain cells from areas that control our senses and movements group together in the striatum. These groups form what she called matrisomes. She also showed that matrisomes exist for every body part and are linked in loops that connect the neocortex (the part of the brain responsible for thinking and control) to the brain stem (which helps coordinate movement). Studies with animals showed that matrisomes are very important for forming habits.
In more recent work, Dr. Graybiel discovered something interesting about how our brain works when we form a habit. She found that certain brain cells become active when a habitual task starts, quiet down during the task, and then become active again when the task is finished. It's like the brain "chunks" the habit into a start, middle, and end.
Dr. Graybiel has also been working to find the exact brain pathways that control things like habit formation, learning, thinking, and making decisions. She was the first to study how low dopamine levels affect brain cells in people with Parkinson's disease during daily tasks.
Her Journey
Dr. Graybiel studied biology and chemistry at Harvard University, finishing her bachelor's degree in 1964. She then earned a master's degree in biology from Tufts University in 1966. After that, she began her PhD studies in psychology and brain science at MIT, where she worked with famous scientists Hans-Lukas Teuber and Walle Nauta. She received her PhD in 1971 and joined the MIT faculty in 1973.
In 1994, Dr. Graybiel was one of 16 women professors at MIT who wrote a letter to the Dean of Science. This letter helped start a big effort to bring attention to and challenge unfair treatment of women at MIT.
Also in 1994, she was named the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience. In 2001, she became an Investigator at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. In 2008, she was given the special title of Institute Professor.
Awards and Special Recognition
In 2001, Dr. Graybiel received the President's National Medal of Science. This is one of the highest honors a scientist can get in the United States. She received it for her amazing discoveries about the brain's structure and how it works, especially how it controls thoughts and movements.
In 2012, she won the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, along with two other scientists. They were honored for explaining how basic brain mechanisms help us understand what we see and make decisions.
In 2018, Dr. Graybiel won the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience with Okihide Hikosaka and Wolfram Schultz. Their work has completely changed how we study the basal ganglia. It has led to important new ideas about how the brain learns and keeps new habits and skills, manages movements, and uses rewards to learn and make decisions. Their work has also helped us understand many brain disorders where the basal ganglia and behavior control are affected.
Dr. Graybiel is a member of several important science groups, including the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
