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Suzanne Haber, Ph.D.Professor:
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Suzanne Haber's career in Neuroscience has been shaped by her ever-present interest in what motivates people to behave in certain ways. Her interest in behavior has taken her from the halls of social science to the chimpanzees in Gombe, Africa and finally to the basal ganglia at the University of Rochester.
Suzanne received her bachelor's degree from Kent State University in Ohio. It was the sixties, a time of social change and awareness. Therefore, after graduation Suzanne went to work at a social science firm where her research projects included investigating how to make libraries more accessible to inner city and underprivileged youths and determining the racial attitude of the police in N. Carolina following the desegregation of schools. Soon after, Suzanne enrolled in a master's program in Social Anthropology. A key turning point in her life came while she was writing a paper on whether chimpanzees have language. It was during this time that she began thinking about what motivated the behaviors that she was interested in. She began to think about the brain. To satisfy this growing curiosity Suzanne left the Master's program in Social Anthropology to work at Massachusetts General Hospital in the group of Seymour Kety, a pioneer in Biological Psychiatry. This is where she became interested in the role of catecholamines, in particular dopamine, in neurological and psychiatric disease processes. The work at Mass. General had a tremendous impact on her but she still maintained an interest in behavior. At this juncture Suzanne went to Gombe, Africa and spent a summer working at the research station of Jane Goodall on projects related to Mother/Infant relationships. It was a fascinating and memorable experience. She returned to Mass. Gen. and then went on to graduate school in Neuroscience at Stanford University to work with David Hamburg, who at the time was Chair of Psychiatry, a department that maintained a strong biological foundation to its approach. When David Hamburg left to become President of the Institute of Medicine, Suzanne completed her Ph.D. with Jack Barchas. Her thesis examined the effects of low dose amphetamine on behavior, as a model of psychopathology. One of the interesting issues that she examined was the change in social distance that occurs in amphetamine-treated animals that become much more aware of, and need more, personal space than control animals. This mirrors the types of changes that can be seen in paranoid schizophrenics who also exhibit changes in personal space requirements. Throughout most of her research experience, Suzanne had focused on behavior, so with her post-doc she embarked on a new skill and began her anatomical training. Working in the lab of Bob Elde at the University of Minnesota she honed her skills in immunocytochemistry. She developed further expertise in neuroanatomy with a two-year stint in Walle Nauta's laboratory at MIT. She was then recruited to the Harvard Faculty and one year later, in 1983, she and her husband William accepted jobs here at the U. of R. and moved along with their two children, to Rochester. The primary focus of her research here in the NBA is the neural basis of behavior and in particular the neuronal network that underlies the role of the basal ganglia in behavior. The basal ganglia are strategically located between the cortex and thalamus to not only relay signals but also to mediate them. The BG are more than a simply a motor structure; they mediate sensory, cognitive, iimbic and motor activities. The interesting question is how does the BG do this all as a functioning unit? While in the past her work has focused on documenting the neurotransmitters and pathways within the basal ganglia networks her current and future research is focused on what happens when the system is perturbed. For example, she is currently using MPTP to create partial dopamine lesions. With low dose MPTP one can see behavioral and anatomical changes in the brain. Through several collaborations she is examining those changes in both neuron and glia.
Recent papers include:
- Haber, et al, Striato-nigro-striatal pathways in primates form an ascending spiral from the shell to the dorsolateral striatum. J. Neurosci. (2000) 20:2369-2382/
- McFarland and Haber, Convergent inputs from thalamic motor nuclei and frontal cortical areas to the dorsal striatum in the primate. J. Neurosci. (2000) 20:3798-3813.
- Fudge and Haber, The central nucleus of the amygdala projection to dopamine sub populations in primates. Neurosci. (2000) 97:479-494.
- Song and Haber, Striatal responses to a partial dopamine lesion: evidence for compensatory sprouting. 2000. J. Neurosci. (2000) 20:5102-5114.
She considers her lab to be a great group of people, which includes Nick McFarland, who recently defended his Ph.D.; Julie Fudge, David Song, Sergio Arana and Keesok Kim. In addition, she has also recently organized the Motivational Neuronal Network Society which held their first meeting last year in Charleston, NC. The second meeting will take place in The Netherlands in June, 2002.
On the home front, Suzanne and her husband William Thomson, have two lovely daughters, Lisa and Rachele. In addition to her skills as a neuroscientist, Suzanne maintains an avid interest in gardening. It is clear that a lifetime of experiences have shaped her as a neuroscientist and truly sparked her interests in the neural basis of behavior. We are lucky to have her in the department of Neurobiology and Anatomy.