Elizabeth Gould (psychologist) - Education and Path To Discovery

Education and Path To Discovery

Gould received her Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience in 1988 at UCLA. In 1989, she was a young post-doc working in the lab of Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, investigating the effect of stress hormones on rat brains. Chronic stress is devastating to neurons, and Gould’s research focused on the death of cells in the hippocampus. (Pasko Rakic's declaration that there was no such thing as neurogenesis was entrenched dogma at that time.) The research was exciting because stress research was a booming field at that time also. However, it was extremely hard work necessitating killing her rats at various time points, pluck their tiny brains out of their cranial encasing, cut through their cortex, slice the hippocampus thinner than a sheet of paper, and with great care count the dying neurons under a microscope. While Gould was documenting the degeneration of these brains, she happened upon something seemingly inexplicable. Evidence pointed to the idea that the brain might also heal itself. She explains, “At first, I assumed I must be counting incorrectly,” Gould said. “There were just too many cells.”