Edward Perl facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Edward R. Perl
Born	October 6, 1926 Chicago, Illinois
Died	July 15, 2014 Durham, North Carolina
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Known for	Pain research
Awards	Bristol-Meyers Squibb Award for Distinguished Research on Pain (1991) Gerard Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Neuroscience (1998)
Scientific career
Fields	Neuroscience
Institutions	University of Chicago Harvard University Johns Hopkins University State University of New York Upstate Medical University University of Utah University of North Carolina

Edward Roy Perl (born October 6, 1926 – died July 15, 2014) was an American neuroscientist. He studied how our bodies sense things, especially how we feel pain. His important work in the late 1960s proved that special sensors called nociceptors exist. These sensors are only for detecting harmful things.

Perl was also one of the people who helped start the Society for Neuroscience. He even served as its first president. He was a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Early Life and Education

Edward Perl was born in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were from Hungary and Czechoslovakia. When he was a kid, he loved electricity, electronics, and radios. This led him to be very interested in science.

He went to the University of Chicago for college. He first studied physics and engineering. But after talking with his father, who was a doctor, he decided to study medicine. He wanted to learn about how the human body works.

During college, Perl joined the U.S. Navy's Officer Training Program. He served as a medical trainee in 1945. He then started medical school at the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Chicago. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1947 and became a medical doctor (M.D.) in 1949.

Starting His Research Career

Perl's first experience with neuroscience (the study of the brain and nerves) was at the University of Illinois. He worked in a lab and met other important scientists. One project he worked on led to his first scientific paper in 1949. He designed a device that helped measure how the heart works. This work also earned him a master's degree in 1951.

In 1948, Perl worked at Harvard Medical Service. There, he met a brain and nerve doctor named Derek Denny-Brown. This meeting helped Perl decide to focus his career on neurophysiology. This field studies how the nervous system works.

In 1950, Perl started a special research program at Johns Hopkins University. He met other scientists who taught him how to record electrical signals from nerves. During this time, he became interested in how signals from very thin nerve fibers, called C-fibers, travel to the brain. These fibers were thought to be involved in sensing pain and temperature.

In 1952, Perl served as a naval doctor. He joined a neuroscience research group at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

First Teaching Jobs

In 1954, Perl became a professor at the State University of New York in Syracuse. He continued to study how C-fiber nerves send signals to the spinal cord.

In 1957, he moved to the University of Utah School of Medicine. There, he focused on how pain signals travel up the spinal cord to the brain. He also studied how different nerve cells in the spinal cord interact.

In 1962, Perl spent a year in France. He met many European neurophysiologists. He also visited Ainsley Iggo in Scotland. Iggo taught him how to record the electrical activity of C-fibers. This skill was very important for Perl's future research. He made many trips back to France to work with his European friends.

Discovering Nociceptors

When Perl returned to the University of Utah in 1963, he started focusing on special nerve cells called nociceptors. These are the body's sensors for harmful things.

He worked with Paul Bessou to study how different nerve fibers respond to touch. Then, with his student Paul Richards Burgess, they did important experiments on cats. They found a type of nerve fiber that only responded to harmful touch, like a strong pinch.

In 1967, Burgess and Perl published their findings. They used the term nociceptor to describe these special pain-sensing neurons. This term was first used by Charles Sherrington in 1906. Their work was the first detailed study of many nociceptors. It showed how these neurons detect things that can hurt tissue and send that information to the brain.

Perl continued these studies in monkeys. He also worked with Bessou again to learn more about different types of nociceptors. They found C-polymodal nociceptors, which respond to many kinds of harmful stimuli. Later, Perl and his team at the University of North Carolina studied the tiny structures of these pain sensors.

In a very important study, Perl and his co-workers asked human volunteers to help. They stimulated individual nociceptors in awake people. This study proved that when these specific nociceptors are activated, people actually feel pain. This showed a direct link between these sensors and the feeling of pain in humans.

How Pain Signals Travel to the Brain

While at the University of Utah, Perl and Burgess Christensen found that a specific area of the spinal cord (called the marginal zone) contained neurons that responded to both painful and harmless signals. Later experiments in monkeys confirmed how unmyelinated nerve fibers (like C-fibers) send signals to the spinal cord. These studies made it clear that certain areas of the spinal cord act as "integration sites." This means they combine information about pain and other sensations from the body.

Perl continued this work when he became the head of the Physiology Department at the University of North Carolina in 1971. His team studied how thinly-myelinated nerve cells connect in the spinal cord. They also looked at the types of neurons in the spinal cord that respond to these signals.

In the 1980s, Perl and his team developed a new method. They could identify and study individual C-fibers. This showed for the first time how these unmyelinated fibers, which respond differently to skin stimulation, are organized in the spinal cord. Other experiments showed that specific areas in the cat thalamus (a part of the brain) responded to painful skin stimulation.

Overall, Perl's lab in the 1970s and 1980s helped explain how pain signals travel from the body to the spinal cord and brain. Their work created a foundation for understanding the special pathways that process painful stimuli.

In his later years, Perl focused on understanding how different neurons in the superficial dorsal horn of the spinal cord work together to process signals from the body. His team recorded electrical signals from these neurons. They then matched these signals to the physical features of the neurons. This led to a system for classifying spinal neurons based on their function and location.

Perl also studied how connections between spinal neurons can change or "modulate" the signals coming from the body. In one project, he worked with Adam Hantman to study a unique group of neurons in transgenic mice. These neurons glowed green (because they had GFP). Perl and Hantman found that these neurons were inhibitory (they stopped other neurons from firing). They also found that these special neurons only responded to certain C-fibers and had very specific connections with other neurons.

Starting the Society for Neuroscience

A neurophysiologist named Ralph W. Gerard had an idea to create a Society for Neuroscience. In 1969, Perl led a committee of scientists to help set up this new society.

As a founding member, Perl was chosen to be the first president. However, he decided to be the "acting president" for a year (1969–1970). He wanted a president to be chosen by a democratic vote of all members. He felt it was important for the society to attract young scientists who were actively working in labs.

Awards and Honors

Edward Perl received many awards for his important work in neuroscience.

• In 1991, he won the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Research on Pain.
• In 1998, he received the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience.
• In 1992, he was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Perl-UNC Prize

In 2000, Edward Perl started a special national award called the Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize. This prize is given every year to scientists who have made very important discoveries in neuroscience.

Perl said that the prize was a way to thank the University of North Carolina for the chances it gave him. He also wanted it to show how strong the neuroscience research program was at the university. As of 2014, six winners of the Perl-UNC Prize have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. These include Linda Buck, Richard Axel, May-Britt Moser, Edvard Moser, Roger Tsien, and Roderick MacKinnon.