Rodolfo Llinás | |
---|---|
Born | 1934 Bogotá, Colombia |
Residence | New York City, New York, United States |
Fields | Neuroscience |
Institutions | NYU School of Medicine |
Alma mater | Universidad Javeriana and Australian National University |
Known for | Physiology of the cerebellum, the thalamus, Thalamocortical dysrhythmia as well as for his pioneering work on the inferior olive, on the squid giant synapse and on human magnetoencephalography (MEG) |
Rodolfo R. Llinás PhD (b. Bogotá, Colombia in 1934) is a neuroscientist. He is presently the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience at the NYU School of Medicine. He attended the Gimnasio Moderno school and received his MD from the Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá in 1959 and his PhD in 1965 from the Australian National University working under Sir John Eccles. Llinás has published over 500 scientific articles.
Contents |
He has studied the electrophysiology of single neurons in the cerebellum, the thalamus, the cerebral cortex, the entorhinal cortex, the hippocampus, the vestibular system, the inferior olive and the spinal cord. He has studied synaptic transmitter release in the squid giant synapse. He has studied human brain function using magnetoencephalography (MEG) on the basis of which he introduced the concept of Thalamocortical dysrhythmia.
Llinás has written that the brain evolved because organisms needed to move around without running into other organisms or objects.[1]
Further contributions include:
Llinás is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1986), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996), American Philosophical Society (1996), the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (Spain) (1996) and the French Academy of Science (2002). Dr. Llinás has received Honorary Degrees from the following universities:
He was also the chairman of NASA/Neurolab Science Working Group.