Mary Lenz

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"Then I pull out my jar with a human brain and I say that none of that compares to the potential power and complexity of what we have here," she said. "The universe is endless with its galaxies, planets, stars, black holes -- and the more that we uncover, the more it seems that there is to explore.

"I look at the brain, and it's like a universe unto itself -- infinitely powerful, complex, awe-inspiring and always in need of further exploration."

Alcantara is an assistant professor of psychology at UT Austin and a member of the Institute for Neuroscience and the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research.

She recently received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program in Neuroscience in recognition of her distinguished record in behavioral neuroscience research and education.

Also UT Austin's Searle Scholars Program nominee, Alcantara studies cellular mechanisms underlying movement, thinking and emotion in the part of the brain called the basal ganglia.

Her aim is to improve basic understanding of those functions and to find out exactly what leads to a variety of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders originating there. Alcantara explained that the basal ganglia is at the heart of a number of clinical disorders including Parkinson's Disease, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette's syndrome and drug addiction

"I am completely fascinated by the role of the basal ganglia," she said. "This is a place in the brain where many motor, cognitive, emotional and reward-related mechanisms are integrated. It's where obsessive-compulsive thoughts and drug addiction manifest themselves."

Alcantara said when extreme dysfunctions play out in the cognitive areas of the basal ganglia and related brain areas, such as the prefrontal cortex, the result can be schizophrenia. Motor dysfunctions in the basal ganglia and related areas can result in the trembling movements of Parkinson's disease or the motor tics associated with Tourette's syndrome.

"Drug addiction, on the other hand, involves the release of dopamine in the reward-related or pleasure areas of the basal ganglia known as the ventral striatum or nucleus accumbens. These pleasure areas are chemically and physically linked to cognitive and motor areas. That is why cocaine can produce schizophrenic-like and Parkinson's-like symptoms, in addition to its euphoric effects," she said.

Alcantara said her students often times believe that certain aspects of human behavior can be defined as "psychological" vs. "biological."

"What I tell my students, however, is that you cannot separate behavior (or a psychological process) from its biological or cellular basis," she said. "Everything we do, think or say involves a cell or ensemble of cells firing at that time. Every time you feel sadness or, alternatively, the compulsive urge or elation that goes along with drug addiction, there is something in the brain that is occurring. There are neurons firing, neurotransmitters being released