From ‘Clark100,” a retrospective of people and ideas that make a difference, published to celebrate Clark University’s 100th anniversary in 1987.
To internationally recognized psychobiologist Donald G. Stein, science’s last frontier is not outer space, but understanding ourselves. Stein himself works at that frontier, experimenting with ways to promote functional recovery from traumatic injury to the central nervous system in mammals. Until recently, brain damage was generally thought to be irreversible, but experiments conducted by Stein and his research colleagues in Clark’s Brain Research Laboratory have demonstrated the brain’s remarkable capacity to recover from injury — results that attracted international attention when they were reported in Science in 1983. Stein’s experiments showed that when small lumps of brain tissue from a normal rat embryo are implanted in injured brain parts of a mature rat, the embryonic tissue survives and new nerve fibers grow between the transplanted tissue and the host brain. When rats that have received the transplants are tested on their ability to master a maze, they show dramatic improvement in behavioral and neurological function. Stein’s research showed that the capacity of such transplants to ameliorate brain damage was not confined to lower brain centers, but also extended to the “higher” regions that control abstract thought, learning, and long-term memory.
Understanding the physiological mechanisms involved in recovery of brain function— and developing effective treatments to enhance or promote such recovery-are still primary goals of Stein’s research. Currently, in addition to the transplant treatment, he is studying the use of injectable substances, such as experimental gangliosides, to enhance nerve repair. Because he believes in a holistic approach, Stein also examines the interactions between environmental factors (training, nutrition, stress) and pharmacological treatments and the roles that they play in affecting recovery.
Stein resists what he sees as a trend in neuroscience toward “tremendous emphasis on molecular changes within and between cells, but a decreasing interest in the behavioral consequences of all these changes.” He believes that this trend, along with pressure to get research funding, “reduces the individual scientist’s capacity to take a broader view of things.”. That broader view is something that Stein works to maintain in his own research and to impart to his students. Researchers who want to work on science’s last frontier, he contends, cannot be merely technicians. They must be”thinkers and problem solvers — with the confidence to be not only capable scientists, but creative individuals.”