2007-9-20

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000 was granted to the Swedish scientist Arvid Carlsson, American scientists Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel to commend their significant discoveries in "signal transmission across human cranial nerve cells".
There're hundred billions of nerve cells in the human brain, and the message transmission among which is fulfilled by different transmission chemicals. Signal transduction mainly exists in a special position called synapse. The three scientists therefore conducted the pioneering work on slow synaptic transmission, a unique signal transduction among nerve cells, and won the annual Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000.
Their discoveries "are of vital importance in comprehending normal brain functions and confusions of signal transduction resulting in nerve or mental diseases". Some new drugs are already developed with the help of these discoveries.
Arvid Carlsson was born in Uppsala Sweden in 1923, and graduated from Swedish Lund University in 1951. In 1959 he was honored Pharmacology Professor of Swedish G?teborg University, and now teaches in the Department of Pharmacology till now. He discovered the signal transmission function of dopamine and its role in governing human movement ability and was granted the prize. His research convinced people the deficiency of dopamine in certain part of the human brain could lead to Parkinson's disease, and helped them develop effective drugs to cure such disease.
Paul Greengard, born in New York USA in 1925, obtained the Doctorate Degree in Johns Hopkins University, and now teaches as Professor in Rockefeller University USA. He won the prize for his discovery of how dopamine and other signal transmission substances worked on the nerve system.
Eric Kandel was born in Vietnam Austria in 1929, and graduated from New York University in 1956. Since 1983 he has been teaching as professor in Columbia University. In his research, he discovered how to transform the synaptic efficiency and what molecular mechanisms were involved, which won the Nobel Prize. His study also proved that the transformation of the synaptic efficiency played a key role in human learning and memory.