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Francisco Gonzalez-Lima, Ph.D.
George I. Sanchez Centennial Professor of Psychology
Email: gonzalez-lima@psy.utexas.edu
Phone: 475-8497 Lab: 471-5895
Office: SEA 3.236 Lab: ARC 3.110
Lab Web Page
List of Publications
Texas Consortium in Behavioral Neuroscience
See also Behavioral Neuroscience
Dr. Gonzalez-Lima received his Ph.D. from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. His research interest is on neuroscience, neuroanatomy, neurobiology, physiological psychology, psychobiology, learning and memory, and neural mechanisms of behavior.
Academic Biography
Higher Education and Mentors
An honors graduate of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, Francisco Gonzalez-Lima received a B.S. in Biology in 1976 and a B.A. in Psychology in 1977. His Honors Thesis entitled "Influence of reproductive experiences on the onset of sterility in neonatally androgenized female rats" was supervised by Drs. Janis L. Dunlap, Arnold A. Gerall and Joan C. King. Dr. King’s teachings, in particular, motivated him to study the brain. During his last summer at Tulane he worked in the neuroendocrinology laboratory of Dr. Andrew V. Schally, who later that year earned a Nobel Prize. The enriching research experiences at Tulane convinced him to pursue a research career. While being recruited to continue studies at Tulane, he met Dr. Sven O.E. Ebbesson, a former Tulane neuroanatomy professor, who recruited him in a visit to Puerto Rico where Dr. Ebbesson was the new director of the medical sciences graduate program. He enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, San Juan, where he received a Ph.D. in Neurological Anatomy in 1980. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima was introduced to electrophysiology research by Dr. Jose del Castillo, director of the Laboratory of Neurobiology, co-discoverer of quantum transmitter release (del Castillo and Katz--that led to a Nobel Prize to Katz), and a former student of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, founding father of modern neuroscience. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima’s research philosophy from thereon has been inspired by the exemplary teachings of Drs. del Castillo and Cajal. His doctoral dissertation entitled "Anatomical organization of the integration of motivational and visual information at the single neuron level" was supervised by Drs. James J. Keene, Jose del Castillo, Earl Kicliter, Hilda Lopez and Walter L. Stiehl. This work utilized electrophysiological recording of single cells and electrical stimulation of the brain, and led to his first major publication in the journal Experimental Neurology.
Faculty Beginnings and Humboldt Fellowship
At the age of 24, Dr. Gonzalez-Lima was appointed Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the newly formed Ponce School of Medicine, Ponce, Puerto Rico. He became part of the founding faculty that developed the curriculum and laboratories that brought U.S. accreditation to this medical school in 1980. He taught under the guidance of Dr. Walter L. Stiehl, director of the Department of Anatomy, who became his beloved mentor and research collaborator. Their most important work was published in a series of papers in the European Journal of Pharmacology. In 1981 he met the German Professor Henning Scheich in a study at the Caribbean Primate Research Center involving the newly developed 2-deoxyglucose autoradiographic method. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima was fascinated by the power of the neuroimaging approach to brain research and proposed an ambitious collaborative research project to Dr. Scheich. His resourceful work in the primate study led Dr. Scheich to invite him to go to Germany and sponsored his application to the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Special arrangements were made with Ponce School of Medicine so that Dr. Gonzalez-Lima could pursue postdoctoral research training in Germany as a Humboldt Research Fellow in 1982-83. This period in Germany at the Technical University of Darmstadt was a productive career experience that led to a very successful series of studies published mainly in Brain Research. After returning from Germany in 1983, Dr. Gonzalez-Lima was promoted to Associate Professor. His fruitful collaboration with Professor Scheich continued in follow-up trips to Germany sponsored by the German Science Foundation (DFG), in August-October 1984, October-December 1985 and August-September 1989. Their pioneering studies in animals, using a brain marker known as fluorodeoxyglucose or FDG, served as a basis for developing the FDG neuroimaging method in humans using positron emission tomography.
Lone Star State and Centennial Professorship
At the Cajal Conference on Neurobiology in Madrid, Spain, September 1984, Dr. Gonzalez-Lima met Texas professors who were impressed by his brain research with FDG autoradiography. He was recruited to the new College of Medicine of Texas A&M University, where he became Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology in January 1986. After he was recommended for promotion in 1989, the University of Texas at Austin recruited Dr. Gonzalez-Lima and he joined the new Institute for Neuroscience and the Department of Psychology as Associate Professor with tenure in January 1991. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima started an exciting revolution in brain metabolic mapping of learning functions, publishing the first neuroimaging studies of Pavlovian conditioning, behavioral habituation and sensitization, and the first book on brain imaging of learning and behavioral functions (Gonzalez-Lima et al, NATO ASI Vol. D68, 1992). This book was based on the first international conference on this topic that he organized in honor of Dr. Louis Sokoloff with sponsorship from NATO and NSF. In 1992, his graduate student A. R. McIntosh and he published a report of the first application of structural equation modeling to neuroscience. This led to a series of pioneering papers on the use of covariance path analysis in neuroimaging that culminated in him organizing an international symposium and the first edited volume on this subject (Gonzalez-Lima and McIntosh, Human Brain Mapping Vol. 2, 1994). During 1991-97 Dr. Gonzalez-Lima and his trainees published a series of studies with his new quantitative cytochrome oxidase method, the first enzyme histochemical method allowing full quantification in terms of calibrated activity units. This approach led to numerous successful studies of cerebral energy metabolic capacity in various species and in Alzheimer’s disease patients, and to the organization of an international symposium and the first book on this subject (Gonzalez-Lima, 1998). Dr. Gonzalez-Lima has supervised over twenty graduate and postdoctoral trainees in his unique combination of behavioral, metabolic mapping and computational approaches to brain research, has chaired numerous national and international symposia, and has been an invited lecturer in over fifty institutions in USA, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Over the years Dr. Gonzalez-Lima’s laboratory has been at the forefront of animal neuroimaging studies of behavioral functions in the world. In 1997 Dr. Gonzalez-Lima became Professor and Head of the Behavioral Neuroscience Division, and in several years built this area by recruiting four new assistant professors. In 1999 he received joint appointments as Professor in the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and became a founding member of the Executive Committee of the new Center for Molecular and Cellular Toxicology. In 2000, Dr. Gonzalez-Lima received offers to become director of neuroscience centers at two other institutions, but he stayed at UT-Austin, where he was honored with the first endowed chair named after a Hispanic professor in the USA, the George I. Sanchez Centennial Professorship in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima is author or co-author of about 200 scientific publications.
Selected Honors and Awards
Departmental Honors, Honors Thesis, Cum Laude, Psi Chi, Tulane University, New Orleans, 1977.
Teaching Award of Medical Class of 1984, Ponce School of Medicine, 1981.
Merit Certificate "Escuela Superior Dr. Pila," Ponce, 1981.
Teaching Award "Programa de Entrenamiento Cientifico Estudiantes Sobresalientes," Ponce, 1982.
Research Advisor Award, Resource Center for Science and Engineering of Puerto Rico, 1982.
Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, F.R. Germany, 1982-83.
Certificates of Recognition for Scientific Contributions, Department of Public Instruction of Puerto Rico, 1983, 85.
Visiting Research Professor travel awards sponsored by the German Science Foundation (DFG), Institute of Zoology, Technical University, Darmstadt, F.R. Germany, SFB45 program, 1984, 1985.
Visiting Senior Scientist (Honorary), Medical Research Council Unit on Neural Mechanisms of Behaviour, Department of Anatomy, University College London, U.K., 1985.
Nominee for the Organization of American States "M.N. Morales" Prize in Biological Sciences, 1985.
Travel award of Society for Neuroscience and International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) to participate in the Second World Congress of Neuroscience, Budapest, Hungary, 1987.
International Enhancement Grant, Texas A&M University, to participate in the Third International Workshop on Visuomotor Coordination and in a NATO collaborative research project at the Department of Neuroethology, University of Kassel, F.R. Germany, 1987.
Travel award of the McDonnell Foundation, Committee on Attention and Perception, to participate in research at the University of London, U.K., and Technical University, Darmstadt, F.R. Germany, 1989.
Best Lecture Award, 1988-89, College of Medicine, Texas A&M University, 1989.
Lecture Award of Medical Class of 1993, College of Medicine, Texas A&M University, 1990.
President-elect (1988-89), President (1989-90),
Texas A&M Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. First Neuroscience Award Lecture, Texas A&M Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience, 1990.
Outstanding Professor of the Year Award 1991-92, National Chicano Health Organization, 1992.
Elected Fellow of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, 1997.
Elected Faculty President, Hispanic Faculty Staff Association, 1998-99.
National/International Grant Review and Advisory Committees
National Institutes of Health: Member, Biological and Neurosciences Review Committee (MSM-2), NIMH, 1989-91.
Ad Hoc Member, Behavioral Neurobiology Review Committee, NIMH, 1990.
Member, Cognitive Functional Neuroscience Review Committee (CFN), NIMH, 1990-93.
Special Reviewer, Cognitive Functional Neuroscience Review Committee (CFN), NIMH, 1994.
Member, Biological and Physiological Sciences Special Emphasis Panel (BPO), NIH, 1997.
Grant Reviewer, National Science Foundation.
Grant Reviewer, Resource Center for Science and Engineering of Puerto Rico.
Grant Reviewer, State Board of Education of Idaho.
Grant Reviewer, Veterans Administration, Neurobiology Merit Review Board.
Grant Reviewer, Mental Health Foundation of Ontario, Canada.
Member, Advisory Committee, American Psychological Association, Minority Fellowship Program, and Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs, 1993-present.
Director, Postdoctoral Training Program in Neuroscience of the APA Minority Fellowship Program and the Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs, funded by NIMH, 1998-present.
External Member, Advisory Committee, Cajal Neuroscience Research Center, San Antonio, 1998-present.
Grant Reviewer, Human Frontier Science Program, France, 1998.
Grant Reviewer, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, 1998.
Grant Reviewer, Alzheimer’s Association, 1999.
Member, Finance and Fundraising Committee, International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, 1999-present.
Main Grants Funded as Principal Investigator/Project Director
1981-83 National Science Foundation (SPI-8106382/-8262061) $54,960 "Integration of Motivation and Visual Information by Cortical Neurons".
1982-86 National Institute of Mental Health (RR08067) $153,868 "Neuronal Integration of Motivation and Visual Information".
1986-87 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO 860813) 189,000 Belgian francs "A 2-Deoxyglucose Study of Neural Substrates for Habituation of the Acoustic Startle Reflex".
1988-97 National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH43353) Approx. $1 million "Brain Imaging of Associative Learning Functions".
1991-93 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO 910370) 1.1 million Belgian francs "Advances in Metabolic Mapping Techniques for Brain Imaging of Behavioral and Learning Functions".
1993-98 National Science Foundation (IBN-9222075) $288,517 "Structural Modeling of Functional Neural Systems"
1994-95 National Institutes of Health (F32 MH10582) $18,600 "Research Fellowship Award".
1998-2000 Advanced Technology Program, State of Texas (Biotechnology-ATP 0361) $139,986 "Laboratory Assay for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease".
1998-2000 National Institutes of Health (F31 MH11968) $52,632 "Research Fellowship Award".
1998-2002 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (RO1 NS37755) $486,000 "Extinction of Conditioned Behavior: A Deoxyglucose Study".
2000-2001 National Institutes of Health (NS37755-02S2) $50,000 "Equipment Supplement".
2000-2002 National Institutes of Health (NS37755-02S1) $82,703 "Graduate Supplement".
Collaborative training grants, contracts, and patent:
1985-86 Department of Health and Human Services (STC-1-D18-MB01180) $241,541 "Health Career Opportunity Program" (E. Gonzalez-Lima, PD).
1994-2004 National Institute of Mental Health (T32 MH18837) $2,028,942 "Training Program in Neurobiology & Behavior" (David Crews, PD).
1996-99 National Institutes of Health (NS35883) $10,507 per year "Subcontract with Florida Atlantic University, Center for Complex Systems" (Robert P. Vertes, PD).
1998 U.S. Patent " Diagnostic Assay for Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease" (F. Gonzalez-Lima).
