Huda Akil facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Huda Akil
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| Born | May 19, 1945 Damascus, Syria
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| Nationality | Syrian |
| Citizenship | United States of America |
| Known for | Systems Neuroscience, Stress Induced Analgesia, Neurobiology of emotions and mental health disorders |
| Spouse(s) | Stanley Watson |
| Awards | / Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2023) / National Medal of Science (2023) Member: |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience |
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| Thesis | Monoaminergic mechanisms underlying stimulation-produced analgesia (1972) |
Huda Akil (born 1945) is a Syrian-American scientist who studies the brain. Her research helps us understand how our brains handle emotions. This includes feelings like pain, worry, and sadness.
Dr. Akil and her team are famous for finding out about endorphins. Endorphins are natural chemicals in our brain. They showed that stress can make endorphins active. These endorphins can then help to reduce pain.
She is a top professor of brain science at the University of Michigan Medical School. She also helped lead a group that studies brain disorders. Dr. Akil is part of the Hope For Depression Research Task Force. This group works to find new ways to understand and treat depression. She has won many awards. She was also the past President of the Society for Neuroscience. This is the biggest group for brain scientists in the world.
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Early Life and Education
Huda Akil was inspired to become a scientist after reading a book about Marie Curie. Marie Curie was a famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner. This book made Akil realize that a woman from anywhere could become a great scientist.
She went to the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She received a scholarship that required her to get top grades. This was hard because she was not fluent in English. But she did it! She graduated in 1967 with a degree in Psychology. Akil was first interested in how language works in the mind. This interest came from her father, who was also a psychologist.
After graduating, Akil taught for a year at the same university. Then she moved to the United States. She continued her studies at the University of Iowa. There, she learned about the basics of brain science and medicines. She found it very interesting. She then did research on learning.
Later, Akil was accepted to the University of California, Los Angeles. She worked on pain research there. After getting her Ph.D., she joined a lab at Stanford University.
Discoveries in Brain Science
Dr. Akil's research focuses on understanding emotions. She has studied how our brains react to the world. She also looks at how these reactions change the brain itself. She has explored how the brain changes our feelings and how we see things.
Understanding Pain
In 1970, Akil joined a team at UCLA. They were studying how the brain handles pain. They found that electrical stimulation could actually reduce pain. They called this "stimulation produced analgesia" (SPA).
Akil and her fellow student, David Mayer, researched this in rats. They found that stimulating certain brain areas stopped the rats from feeling pain. Other senses were not affected. This discovery became the topic of Akil's Ph.D. paper.
The Role of Endorphins
Further research led Akil and her team to discover endorphins. Endorphins are natural pain-relieving chemicals in the brain. They found two specific types of endorphins called enkephalins.
They showed that stress can make the brain release endorphins. These endorphins then act like natural painkillers. This was a big step in understanding how our bodies deal with pain and stress.
Brain and Mental Health
Dr. Akil also worked with her husband, Stanley Watson. They studied how stress affects the brain. They looked at how stress relates to anxiety and depression. Their research explored the link between opioids (like endorphins) and stress-induced pain relief. They also studied how stress hormones affect emotions.
They were the first to show that in people with depression, the brain might not react normally to certain stress hormones. This was an important finding for understanding mental health.
Honors and Awards
Dr. Akil has received many important awards for her work.
- In 1993, she got the Pacesetter Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
- In 1994, she and Stanley Watson received the Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Foundation Medical Research Award.
- In 1998, she was honored with the Sachar Award and the Bristol Myers Squibb Award.
- She received the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences in 2006.
- In 2007, she won the Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award and the Patricia Goldman-Rakic Prize.
- More recently, she received the Paul Hoch Distinguished Research Service Award in 2010.
- In 2012, she and Watson won the Sarnat Prize.
- In 2013, she received the AAMC Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences.
- In 2023, she was awarded the Gruber Neuroscience Prize and the National Medal of Science.
Dr. Akil is also a member of several important groups. These include the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has also served as President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Society for Neuroscience.
Family Life
Huda Akil is married to Stanley Watson. They both work at the University of Michigan Medical School. They have worked together on many research projects. They have two children, Brendon and Kathleen. Brendon is also a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan. Dr. Akil has said she worked hard to balance her career and raising her children.
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Dr. Huda Akil
See also
In Spanish: Huda Akil para niños
