Memory
Mind Games
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Dr. Leonardo G. Cohen has brains on his mind. He exchanges e-mail about brains with scientists around the world. He meets with research fellows throughout the day to talk about brains. He leads studies about brains.
Dr. Cohen, 46, is the chief of the human cortical physiology unit at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. His goal and his fascination are finding out how the brain works. As a medical student in his native Argentina, he found neurology was always relegated to the end of courses. "It was the most unknown segment of medicine at that time," he says. He set out to explore the field, and now focuses on rehabilitation after stroke or other brain injury.
He researches "the possibility of developing new strategies that could promote recovery of function." He arrives at his office on this day about 7:30 a.m. - after a workout at the gym - to answer e-mail. Dr. Cohen sometimes helps edit scientific papers on line, or discusses cortical research - work dealing with the cerebral cortex. He loves the ability technology affords him to pursue these discussions. "I'm working with manuscripts with people all over the world, and it's like they're here," he says. At 9 a.m., he meets with one of his five research fellows, Dr. Alain Kaelin-Lang, a Swiss native.
Like the other fellows, Dr. Kaelin-Lang meets with Dr. Cohen frequently to discuss his research. Each fellow is conducting studies, their ultimate goal to write papers for publication in scientific journals. In Dr. Kaelin-Lang's experiments, a human subject's hand is stimulated electrically, and he has found corresponding brain stimulation in a section of the brain that learns quickly. Doctors could use this information, Dr. Cohen says, to prime patients for physical rehabilitation. A stroke victim, for example, would receive a hand massage or electrical stimulation for a few hours before getting rehab.
After the meeting, Dr. Cohen visits NIH's "poster day." His three students, who have been working with him and the fellows, are exhibiting posters along with the hundreds of other high school and college students working at NIH for the summer. He stops and chats with the students about their projects, which mirror the fellows' research. They have produced professional-looking posters complete with research method, summary and technical diagrams. Then about 10:30, Dr. Cohen meets with German fellow Dr. Konrad J. Werhahn in the building's cafeteria. As during his meeting with Dr. Kaelin-Lang, Dr. Cohen's demeanor is casual but intense. He listens carefully to Dr. Werhahn, looks intently at the graphs of his data, and offers suggestions on how to better display it and other research to conduct. He also tells Dr. Werhahn how to better target the research to give it a better chance at publication.
Dr. Werhahn is studying the effects of limb amputations on the brain. When a right arm is amputated, for example, the left cortex - which controls the right side of the body - radically alters. Dr. Werhahn is attempting to find out if the right cortex is also dramatically affected. In his experiments, a blood pressure block is placed on the arm to simulate amputation, and brain activity is measured. He has found that if the right arm is blocked, the left hand and bicep twitch, showing right brain response.
Now he is trying to map the passage of the amputation information from one side of the brain to another. When fellows first arrive, Dr. Cohen works with them on a hypothesis and teaches them about research techniques. They become more independent as time goes on, and Dr. Cohen meets with them regularly. "The two main things I try to focus on - What are the main biological issues?" he says. In other words, why is this an important issue?
The second factor in conducting successful research is learning how to tell your story. "Imagine that you have to tell this story to a 13-year-old kid," he says. Dr. Cohen spends about 50 percent of his time working with the fellows and doing administrative tasks. Ten percent is spent with patients, and he spends the balance of his time writing e-mail and making notes.
Then there is his leisure time - whatever is left of it, since Dr. Cohen's day can stretch from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. He has a passion for music, and has been to jazz and other music festivals around the world. That ties in with another love, travel. His office is dotted with pictures of his teen-aged son and daughter in various places the family has visited. Dr. Cohen came to the United States in 1983 after the war in the Falkland Islands derailed a grant he had received to go to London.
With money in hand but unable to go to London because of Britain's conflict with Argentina, Dr. Cohen wrote letters to the United States asking for a position. "I took the warmest [response] letter that I got," he says, and ended up at the University of California at Irvine. From there he came to NIH in 1985. "I got really fascinated with the type of work that was being done here," he says. He followed work at NIH with a neurology residency at Georgetown University from 1990 to 1994, then returned to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
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