Professor
Marie-Francoise Chesselet
Chair
Department of
Neurology
UCLA
Dear Professor
Chesselet:
What a great surprise
to receive personified news from my Alma Matter! I really appreciate all of you for having devoted an effort to
the unique idea of fostering the human links between Faculty, former and
current UCLA graduate students! To warm
up for future interactions let me provide with an overview from personal to
scientific the experiences along the sixteen years that have elapsed since I
left UCLA! My research work during that
time is relatively easy to summarize. As you remember, I graduated in 1987,
having the fortune of being Professor Roger A. Gorski’s graduate student. Under
his and Daniel C. Pease´s supervision we were able to describe the fine
structure of the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area, which, on
neuroanatomical grounds, corresponds to the medial preoptic nucleus. Upon my return
to my country, at the National Institute of Nutritional and Medical Research
(Instituto Nacional de la Nurición e Investigación Médica), with the frank
support of Director Manuel Campuzano, we funded the Laboratory of Experimental
Pathology and Diagnostic Electron Microscopy. From the 10 years I spent there resulted
scientific publications X to W on the enclosed list of publications. In essence
it was a period devoted to investigate organizational effects of gonadal sex
hormones on the developing brain, and describe rare clinico-pathological
entities as revealed by cytological and immunohistochemical techniques. In 1977
I had the fortune of being hired by the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), more precisely to its
Institute for Neurobiology. Here, still under Professors Gorski and Pease´s
bias I managed to write a five-year grant application and received substantial
monetary support. This, in conjunction with the talent and energy from our six
graduate students, and under Gema´s (my senior technician) supervision we
continue studying the phenotypic repercussions of gonadal hormones, now with a
wide variety of methodological strategies, from molecular to behavioral
neurobiology. From the unforgettable period at UCLA I had the opportunity of a
lifetime of meeting Rafael Lorente de Nó, one of the most versatile and
prestigious scientists of the last Century. Professor de Nó (a Distinguished
Scientist at UCLA-BRI) was a close friend of
Professors Clemente, Scheibel, Segundo, Kruger and Décima, among others.
The latter introduced me to Lorente de Nó. During the following three years, I
became personally involved with Lorente de Nó. This experience left a definite
mark in my desire to study brain structure. Hence, in 1999, I took the Golgi
technique as a fundamental procedure to search for novel cell types and
tissular organiztion of the mammalian brain. From this later period date works
46 to 52 from the enclosed list. Since 1997 I have been devoted to teaching Neuroanatomy
and Histology in our graduate program.
Of course that I would
love to share your enthusiasm in promoting further personal involvement among
UCLA alumni. Although I am fifteen hundred miles away from Los Angeles, the
distance should be negligible if I had been asked to join you.
Lastly, I have taken
the freedom of submitting my monetary contribution on a separate basis.
Looking forward hiring
from you, I remain
Enthusiastically
yours,
Jorge Larriva-Sahd, M.D.,
Ph.D.
Enclosed is a file of scientific
publications