Neuroscience in Puerto Rico has its origins in the Laboratory of Neurobiology of the University of Puerto Rico that was founded in 1967 by Dr. José Del Castillo, a pioneering neurophysiologist who earned and enjoyed all his life a tremendous prestige and respect throughout the world as a first-rate scientist. His seminal work which contributed to the knowledge of the mechanism of synaptic transmis
sion, including the derivation of the quantal theory of release and the vesicular hypothesis, established a high bar for competitive research and initiated a steady traffic of influential neuroscientists through the laboratories and seminar rooms of what later became known as the Institute of Neurobiology (INB). Dr. Del Castillo moved from the National Institutes of Health to San Juan in 1959, attracted by the possibility of being able to have access to marine organisms for experimentation on a year round basis. At that time the UPR School of Medicine occupied buildings near the ocean in Old San Juan, originally built for the Columbia University School of Tropical Medicine (1926-1949). Army Hospital, became available in the mid-1960s, during the administrations of Governor´s Muñoz Marín and Sanchez Vilella, and the first of a series of NIH program project grants was submitted and funded to start a neurobiology laboratory under the direction of Dr. Del Castillo. The then Laboratory of Neurobiology was interdisciplinary from the start, bringing together physiologists, pharmacologists, anatomists and biochemists, an approach that was revolutionary at the time. The goals of the Laboratory of Neurobiology were to study the nervous and neuromuscular systems of simple animals, with emphasis on tropical marine invertebrates. Under Del Castillo´s leadership, the Institute of Neurobiology became a widely known and respected center of scholarship and research for neuroscientists in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States. Today the Institute of Neurobiology of the Medical Sciences Campus (MSC) provides a dedicated and centralized unit for conducting multidisciplinary basic neuroscience research using a variety of simple animal (terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates and lower vertebrates) and cellular model systems. The focus of the research is on neuroplasticity, behavior, and function at the circuit, cellular, and molecular levels. The Institute is presently composed of twelve laboratories that address some of the most challenging issues facing modern Neuroscience – ranging from synapse development, regeneration following neural tissue injury, the neural basis and modulation of behavior, regulation and function of membrane receptors and application for future drug development, the molecular basis of addiction, to the impact of habitat contaminants, temperature variations, and other environmental changes on nervous system function. The Institute also houses shared Neuroimaging (confocal, live, and electron microscopy), Molecular, and Neurogenetics Core Facilities, that are available to all its investigators and large cadre of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as visiting scientist and collaborators.
