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Featured Events: Something for Everyone
Written by Cindy Buchner, SDSF Newsletter Editor
Celebrate the February birthdays of Galileo and Darwin at our featured musical events! Evolution of Music ponders Darwin's question from a neuroscience perspective: Is music an evolutionary adaptation? Enjoy Galileo: 1610 as Mark Thompson breathes life into the "Father of Modern Science".
High school and college students with a passion for the future of technology can attend Tech Trends, a Technology Seminar to learn what it takes to succeed in today's workforce. More Events for Students >>
Bring your children to the Tijuana Estuary to investigate sensitive birds while learning What's the Danger in Being Endangered? More Events for Children >>
Teacher workshops such as Dumbledore's Transfiguration Class focus on bringing the magic of Harry Potter into the classroom, while Estuary Explorers brings the teachers out of the classroom to travel through a watershed. More Events for Teachers >>
Meet the Scientist: Ig Nobel Winner Hagop Akiskal
Written by Jennifer Rust, Staff Writer mySDScience.com
 What’s the difference between love and obsessive-compulsive disorder? Dr. Hagop Akiskal, distinguished professor of psychiatry and director of the International Mood Center at the UCSD, has helped us see that, from the brain’s point of view, there’s not much of a difference at all. In 2000 Dr. Akiskal shared the Ig-Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. The Ig-Nobel prizes celebrate work "that makes people laugh and then makes them think." Dr. Akiskal will discuss The Chemistry of Love at the San Diego Science Festival.
Q: How did you become interested in psychiatry? What brought you into this field?
A: The last year of high school I read Jung and Freud, which was the typical way in which people got seduced into psychiatry in the 1960s. I thought their work was fascinating but I was skeptical. Nonetheless, it was intriguing: understanding the human mind, because we learned nothing about it in the curriculum.
My family wanted me to do something more “solid”, like become a doctor or an engineer. I got a full scholarship for medical school, which decided the matter. Then the more I saw patients as a medical student the more I realized that the emotional side of people was really neglected. Even today it’s neglected, though not as much as in those days.
Q: How did your early work in psychiatry influence you? How did you end up looking at love?
A: Psychiatry in those days meant severe mental disorders, like schizophrenia. I came to the United States to study schizophrenia. I was very disappointed because the American concept of schizophrenia at the time, in 1969, was too broad and insufficiently science based. I was quite disappointed and wanted to leave psychiatry.
I went to the University of Wisconsin, because it was famous for the Harlow Laboratory. I participated in a series of very ingenious experiments in which you could separate a monkey from its mother or peers and see what happens. We observed their behaviors and tried to find out what was going on in the brain. Separation, it means that you’re breaking an attachment bond. So there were all these different systems of love, and it was quite interesting to see the way love manifested in animals other than humans, so it’s not surprising that three decades later I ended up eventually doing work on romantic love.
The implications of this for human behavior, what separation does to human beings, what it does to brain chemistry, these were not things that were being discussed very much in those days. People who were interested in relationships were not interested in what happens in the brain and those who were interested in the brain were not interested in relationships. There was a schism between psychology and biology.
Q: What do you feel has been your greatest achievement as a scientist?
A: I wrote one of the first compelling papers, if not the first, on how psychoanalysis, behavior, neurochemistry and neurophysiology are inter-related. It was published in Science in 1973. I had the daring idea of sending it to Science, which was the ultimate standard, even in those days. I think there had only been one psychiatrist published in Science then. So, at the age of 26, I became very famous. It is one of the most highly cited papers, not just in psychiatry and psychology, but in biology and medicine at large.
Q: What do you think young people offer science?
A: I think the audacity of a young person who wants to say something that he or she is convinced is new is important. Many people who read my Science paper liked it, but some of my more senior colleagues didn’t like it. I think that controversy is how science begins, because it’s new, breaking new ground. Young people have new ideas, they don’t believe everything they are told and they ask good questions. They will have the daring to say and publish it and that’s what happened.
Q: How did you decide to compare obsessive-compulsive disorder and love?
A: Falling in love and losing your love object are very powerful emotions. One talks about being obsessed with the love object in popular language, and now we had the technology to study this. So the question arose: in what way is romantic love an obsession? These are situations that evolve over time, and with development of technology and the wish to do something unusual.
Q: How do you measure love?
A: This is the domain of poetry. For the purposes of scientific measurement we have to rely on people's verbal statements, how they feel. Then you have to choose a scale. In this instance our hypothesis was there was some similarity to obsessive behavior. Well, the way one scales obsessive behavior is how many hours one thinks about their preoccupation. Obsessive people think about things that they don’t want to think about, or they do things they don’t want to do. Four hours of this per day is a pretty impairing level. In modern day life giving four hours of your time to your obsession is a pretty long time.
A person in love is completely engrossed with the image of the love object. So, if they were in this state for four hours or longer per day, that’s what we were interested in.
Q: Do you think there are people who do not want to know the chemistry behind love?
A: I would say that falling in love is the most powerful human emotion. There’s nothing like it. If there’s a scientific answer to it, I would think most people are sufficiently interested to want to know more about it. Other people want to live with the mystery of it. They don’t want science in it. I mean, if you discuss the subject with people in literary fields they will not want to listen to what we’re discussing. I guess most people want it as part of poetry and music, that is how they understand it, at that level.
Q: After this work what are your views on love?
A: Romantic love is not just biology. It’s immensely more. It’s somewhere between the dopamine enzymes all the way beyond the brain to intense joy and happiness, which is intangible. I think there’s nothing more fascinating.
Q: How do you feel about this work and the recognition you received for it?
A: For somebody with an interest in poetry, this is as poetic as I could be in science.
Q: What would you like to communicate to young people who might attend your talk?
A: Well, to the young general public who are deciding what careers they want to choose, I want to convey the notion that there’s another universe of science out there, which is the universe of human relationships. This universe in which we live is vast and has positive and negative aspects to it, from war to xenophobia, to genocide on one extreme versus love, trust, what physicians do, what scientists do, what poets and lovers do, what mothers do. It’s not just in our DNA. It’s also in the environment, culture. These fields are no less scientific. Yet they are more than that. They have to do with intangibles that were once only asked by philosophers and poets: What is the nature of man? What is the nature of love?
Hear Dr. Akiskal discuss The Chemistry of Love Monday March 2, 2009 from 6:30-8 pm at the La Jolla Public Library, 7555 Draper Drive, San Diego. Register now >>
Sponsor Spotlight: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.
Written by Kelly Lagor, Staff Writer mySDScience.com
 San Diego is home to one of the largest scientific research communities in the country, making it an ideal location for the West Coast’s inaugural science festival. In addition to the world-class research institutes, San Diego also has the third largest concentrations of biotech companies in the country, with many located on the Torrey Pines Mesa. The richness of this research community makes San Diego an appealing location for many biotech start-ups.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. named for the city in Egypt that was an ancient center of scientific learning, is the dominant landlord of life science properties in San Diego. Alexandria provides lab space in and around the Torrey Pines Mesa for anyone from start-ups to well-established companies needing more room to grow. Their key role in providing San Diego’s brain trust with space to flex their mental muscle helps keep the region on the scientific map. A recent addition to this community is the Science Hotel, which provides a backbone of lab services to high-quality, emerging life science companies.
Alexandria’s Chief Executive Officer, Joel S. Marcus is promoting the San Diego Science Festival as a member of the festival’s Nifty Fifty program. His experience with science, biotechnology, and real estate, coupled with his background as a lawyer and accountant, led him to found Alexandria.
When Marcus first heard about the Science Festival, he knew right away he wanted to get involved. “Science and engineering are the most important areas for the future because this country needs to stay competitive and to continue to have a dominant economy world wide,” Marcus says. “To continue to have a dominant economy world wide, we are going to need many more great scientific thinkers and engineering people who can help design and build the most innovative technological products for the 21st century.”
As a sponsor of the science festival, Alexandria, in conjunction with their tenant partner, Senomyx, Inc., will be presenting The Science of Wine on March 18th at the Senomyx lab space, which will explore the science of taste and the health benefits of wine followed by a formal instructor-led wine tasting. The Senomyx lab is located at 4764 Nexus Centre Drive, San Diego.
Register now >>
About SDSF: The largest celebration of science on the West Coast has hundreds of programs for students, families, and adults across San Diego in the month of March culminating in our first annual Expo Day, Saturday, April 4 in Balboa Park. Thanks to our sponsors, collaborators, and to you for your support.
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