Dr. Huda Akil
Professor and Co-Director Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan
Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University
PhD in Psychobiology University of California, Los Angeles
Dr. Huda Akil remembers the day she decided to be a neuroscientist. She was a psycholinguistics master’s student at the American University of Beirut and was looking for a journal article to read for a psychobiology class. Huda stumbled upon a study by Dr. James Olds describing rats who would forgo food and sleep to continue pressing a lever that induced brain stimulation in a particular spot. “That absolutely blew my mind,” she says. Hours later, she had read everything James and others had written on how the brain processes reward. By the time she left the library that night, she knew that she wanted to spend her life studying the brain.
While she can pinpoint the moment she fell in love with neuroscience, she had always possessed the limitless curiosity of a scientist. As a child growing up in Damascus, Syria, Huda constantly asked questions about the world around her. And her father – an educational psychologist – was always there to answer. “He was a good dad. He took those questions seriously,” Huda remembers fondly. Deeply interested in how humans think, Huda had seen language as a window into the mind and was thus pursuing a degree in psycholinguistics. That afternoon in the library, though, her perspective shifted. She was struck by the realization that understanding language was an outcome of understanding the brain, not the window through which to do so. Huda would go on to make a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the brain works – in particular the brain’s ability to suppress pain.
After completing her master’s degree, Huda applied to graduate programs in psychobiology in the United States (“neuroscience” as a field was not yet common). Ultimately, she landed in Dr. John Liebeskind’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. The lab focused on neuropathic pain, pain that does not arise from a peripheral stimulus. Huda and another graduate student set out to stimulate particular brain regions in rats, trying to elicit an avoidance response indicating pain. As they moved their stimulating electrode, they hit an area that did not cause avoidance but instead seemed to ameliorate pain. As so often happens in science, this unexpected result altered the course of her thesis project. It would ultimately drive her academic career and break open a new field of neuroscience.
After starting to do some follow-up experiments, Huda had another encounter with serendipity. She casually mentioned her results to a prominent pharmacology professor at a scientific meeting, describing her brain stimulation protocol as having a similar effect to morphine. He was interested and suggested she directly compare the stimulation to morphine administration. That was the extent of their conversation that night, but this passing comment again changed the direction of the project. Back in the lab, Huda began to compare the brain stimulation to morphine. Not only did they produce similar behavioral effects, but the effects of both were inhibited by naloxone (which blocks opioid receptors). This shocking result meant that the stimulation was actually causing the brain to release a substance which acted through the same pathway as morphine. This was the very first physiological evidence that the brain possessed endogenous endorphins. The field exploded.
Huda chose to do a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dr. Jack Barchas, joining a lab where she could supplement her knowledge of neural stimulation with biochemical assays. Jack’s group did not study endorphins, so Huda pioneered a whole new branch of the Barchas lab, teaching herself how to make antibodies against endorphins and doing assays to understand endorphins’ kinetic and pharmacological properties. She built upon her discoveries as a graduate student, working in collaboration with her husband – Dr. Stan Watson, a neuroanatomist – to visually map endorphin activity in the brain. When their first bit of exciting data coincided with the birth of their first child, they realized they would not be able to travel to an upcoming conference to present it. On a whim, they contacted one of the conference speakers, Dr. Floyd Bloom, to ask if they could send him some data slides to add to his presentation. After the conference, they started getting phone calls of congratulations. Floyd – an established scientist and among their toughest competition in the field – was so impressed upon seeing their data that he presented it instead of his own, giving Huda and Stan full credit. Even in their absence, their data spoke for itself.
After her productive postdoc, Huda started her own lab at the University of Michigan. In an incredible twist of fate, the lab space she was offered had previously belonged to James Olds, whose studies had first inspired her to study neuroscience back in that library halfway across the world. She now co-directs the interdisciplinary Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, which acts to foster collaboration among scientists with different backgrounds and perspectives – collaborations and interactions that she believes can be transformative. Leadership is a clear theme throughout Huda’s many accolades; in addition to directing an institute, she has served as president of two major scientific organizations, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Huda’s leadership has left a lasting mark. As SfN president, she fought for mental health parity, arguing before Congress that mental disorders should be treated as physical disorders in the context of insurance coverage. “There is a sociology to science that is sometimes as important as the science itself,” Huda remarks. Throughout her career, Huda has been moved by her interactions with those who struggle with mental health and their loved ones – particularly those that look to her and to other scientists as a last source of hope.
Running an institute and a lab keeps Huda busy, and she loves those roles. They provide her with the opportunity to create a subculture of support and sense of family that was so important to her as a young immigrant scientist. However, if she eventually scales back her administrative duties, Huda would like to throw her energy into communicating the importance of brain health to the public. Brain health often only receives the spotlight when it is compromised, but so much can be done to promote brain health outside the context of disease. Huda says she would particularly love for the younger generation of neuroscientists to champion this cause. And if anyone’s passion and drive could inspire a generation of scientists to fight for brain health, it would be Huda’s.
Check out Huda’s autobiography (co-authored with her husband) titled “Tales of Endorphins and Other Adventures” here—it’s in volume 8.
Listen to Nancy’s interview with Huda on December 9th, 2019 below!
