- Pasko Rakic
Pasko Rakic (Croatian Paško Rakić) is a
neuroscientist atYale University . Rakic has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences USA, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Presidency of the Society for Neuroscience. [ [http://www.wcpg.org/plenary.htm World Congress plenary lectures] ] He was a co-recipient, withThomas Jessell andSten Grillner , of the inauguralKavli Prize for Neuroscience in 2008.__TOC__Early life
Born in
Ruma ,Kingdom of Yugoslavia (nowVojvodina ,Serbia ) into a Croatian family [ [http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:YfPB59Lv8J0J:www.medicineatyale.org/v4i1_mar_april_2008/march-april08.pdf+Pa%C5%A1ko+Raki%C4%87+Croat&hl=hr&ct=clnk&cd=37&gl=hr&client=firefox-a ] , Cartographer of the brain] , Rakic studied medicine at theUniversity of Belgrade , then embarked on a career as a neurosurgeon. His research career began in 1962, with a fellowship atHarvard University .Research
According to "Nature Medicine", his first experiments required "a special grant, nearly 200
rhesus monkey s and so much radioactive thymidine that manufacturers had to retool their entire production system to provide it." Rakic injected the monkeys'foetus es with radioactivethymidine at a particular time after conception. Only replicating cells took up the radioactive label, which enabled Rakic to trace the lineages of brain cells as they were created. He and his team then sliced the brain of each monkey into 7,000 sections for the benefit of future researchers. Because he used a radiolabel that decays slowly, the slides should be useful for years, and have so far led to more than 24 papers. Dove, Alan. [http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v11/n4/full/nm0405-362.html "Profile: Pasko Rakic"] , "Nature Medicine" 11, 362 (2005)]He received the 15th Annual Bristol-Meyers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research, a $50,000 award, which noted two of his hypotheses in particular. The first hypothesis is the radial unit hypothesis, that in the developing cerebral cortex the cells are created at the base of each column, and that each new cell migrates past its predecessors. In the related
protomap hypothesis, external signals determine cell function as it grows and forms complex connections. [http://research.yale.edu/ysm/temp/YSM-Article209.pdf]Among the discoveries made by Pasko Rakic is the first description of neurogenesis in the
subventricular zone .References
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