Interview with Leslie G. Ungerleider

Interview with Leslie G. Ungerleider

Ungerleider, Leslie G. ; Gashurov, Irene

Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni at the National Institute of Mental Health; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the National Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni living in the DC area

Dr. Ungerleider is an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, and Chief of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health. Ungerleider has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2000), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (2001), and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2009 she received the William James Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science in recognition of how her research advanced our understanding of brain function and its relevance to public health and also for her mentorship of young researchers.

2018-03-16

In Copyright

Leslie Ungerleider.mp3

2018-03-16

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

53:10 minutes

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Leslie G. Ungerleider
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 16 March 2018
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(Start of Interview)

LU: 00:02
My name is Leslie Ungerleider. I am being interviewed as part of a project of alumni from Binghamton at the time I attended, of course, it was called Harpur College and then while I was there, I was there between 1962 and 1966 and while I attended, it became State University of New York at Binghamton. So, I graduated as an alumni of SUNY at Binghamton, and I understand now it is Binghamton University, but I look back still fondly on my days at Harpur College.

IG: 01:01
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Where did you grow up?

LU: 01:05
I grew up in New York City, in Queens. I was born in Brooklyn. Grew up in Queens.

IG: 01:12
Where in Queens?

LU: 01:13
In Bayside New York. I attended Martin Van Buren High School.

IG: 01:26
One thing that I did not ask you, I am also I grew up in Queens in Whitestone, so just next door, what is your role currently? What is your position? We did not identify you.

LU: 01:41
I am a scientist. I am the chief of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, which is part of the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institutes of Health here in Bethesda, Maryland.

IG: 02:02
Thank you. So, you grew up in Queens and you went to Martin Van Buren High School. What was the expectation for you about going college to college? Were your parents- did your parents go to college?

LU: 02:23
My father was a dentist. [coughs] Sorry excuse me. My mother did not. My mother graduated from high school and then was expected to go out and get a job and earn money to help her parents. So, she was a homemaker when I was growing up, but my father was a successful dentist. Both my parents grew up in the Depression.

IG: 02:59
And you are uh-

LU: 03:00
Both-both, my all of my grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe.

IG: 03:09
Did you have siblings?

LU: 03:11
A younger brother and a younger sister. It was expected that we would all go to college, and we all did, and we all became professionals. My brother a lawyer and my sister, a therapist.

IG: 03:30
Why- what were your reasons for going to Harpur?

LU: 03:35
My reasons were that I was rejected at all the other schools I applied to, I was rejected at Cornell, and I was rejected at Rochester. And so, I had heard about, I had heard of Harpur. I heard it was a small liberal arts college. So, then I applied to Harpur and I applied to NYU. I got into both and decided to go to Harpur because I needed to get away from home.

IG: 04:13
I see. Also, did you get a Regents scholarship?

LU: 04:18
I did.

IG: 04:19
You did so it was probably close to free.

LU: 04:23
Correct.

IG: 04:28
So, what was the reputation of the college back then?

LU: 04:33
All I heard was that it was small liberal arts, and people who went there loved it.

IG: 04:42
And what was your intention? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to study?

LU: 04:50
I thought I wanted to study psychology, and when I arrived, I discovered that psychology at Harpur was experimental psychology. It was not the clinical psychology that I thought I would be taking, and I discovered that I loved experimental psychology, and so it was a great fit. In my last year, I thought, "Oh, maybe I really want to go to medical school and not go on in psychology." But then by that time, it was too late to start taking chemistry and all of the other pre-med courses. But I often rude not going on in medicine, it would have been much easier at NIH having an MD than a PhD to be successful.

IG: 06:03
Could you expand on that?

LU: 06:07
Having an MD puts you a step ahead of PhDs at the NIH, and it would have been easier becoming getting promoted, becoming a lab chief with a medical degree.

IG: 06:28
So let us, let us stay with Harpur College for a little bit. So do you remember any you know, what are some of the turning points you said that you wanted to that made you appreciate experimental psychology. What did you love about it?

LU: 06:50
I love my professors. I love [crosstalk]

IG: 06:53
Who were they? Do you remember?

LU: 06:56
No, I just remember being inspired.

IG: 07:02
How early-

LU: 07:06
I love the subject matter. It just resonated with me.

IG: 07:11
So, what kind of experiments did you do? Do you remember? What did you learn from them? What-

LU: 07:22
I loved working with rats. And it just made a lot of sense to me, and I went on in experimental psychology and only became a neuroscientist later.

IG: 07:51
So, what kind of things were revealed to you about cognition through these early experiments that you did?

LU: 08:02
Well, I learned about reinforcement. That was, that was a big, big thing about experimental psychology at the time. And then, through my classes, I discovered about this amazing thing called brain stimulation, that electrodes placed in the brain and stimulating certain reward structures would be as reinforcing as eating and drinking.

IG: 08:38
How interesting.

LU: 08:42
So that reward could come from external events like food drinking, but also from centers in within the brain itself, and those centers could be stimulated and lead to reinforcement and reward.

IG: 09:06
So, did you learn that at Harpur College? Were you doing-

LU: 09:10
I read about it at Harpur and then that is what I did for my PhD work.

IG: 09:17
Where did you do your PhD?

LU: 09:18
At New York University.

IG: 09:20
Okay, so that-that is all very interesting. So let us, let us return to and what yours were. You did you directly go on to your PhD after graduating.

LU: 09:38
I did.

IG: 09:39
Okay.

LU: 09:40
And I-I applied to, I desperately wanted to come back to New York City, so I applied to only schools in New York was accepted every place, and then because NYU had the opportunity to do brain stimulation work. I went there.

IG: 10:04
That is, that is a fascinating line of study. Let us return to Harpur College, just let us stay with Harpur College, just for a while longer. So, you cannot recall the faculty that made an impression, but they obviously did, and they sort of directed your future career. Just what was the- did you make friends on campus? What were your class- what were some of your experience, experiences with residential life and-

LU: 10:44
I had a very-very close group of friends when I was there, there were five or six of us who were inseparable.

IG: 10:57
Did they- were they all in the psychology?

LU: 11:02
No.

IG: 11:02
No.

LU: 11:03
No. I just, I think, the first day I arrived, I met Linda Gray, who turned out to become my best friend for life. And I met Carol Fox, who turned out to be a lifelong friend until she died. Pam Cerrapo, Susan Novogratzky, most of these women are gone now, sadly.

IG: 12:09
So, you know, how did you spend your time together with your friends?

LU: 12:15
We used to hang out in the student center and drink coffee and play cards.

IG: 12:22
Oh, did you have any-any opportunity to go to Binghamton for dinners, or did you spend all your time on campus?

LU: 12:38
We used to hang out at a bar called Gentleman Joe's. We really liked it because it was integrated with people of all color.

IG: 12:59
Good. That is interesting. So were you, were you progressive, do you think in your [crosstalk]

LU: 13:10
I arrived at Harpur with sort of a bunch of plaid skirts and pretty tops, and I left in jeans. So, it really completely changed me.

IG: 13:30
It completely changed you, um-

LU: 13:35
It made me aware.

IG: 13:36
Yes, and how do you think-

LU: 13:39
And of course, we all got very caught up in the anti-war movement-

IG: 13:43
I see.

LU: 13:44
-in those days.

IG: 13:45
Did you-

LU: 13:47
Marches on Washington so on.

IG: 13:49
Did you take part in them?

LU: 13:50
Oh yes.

IG: 13:51
You went to Washington and-

LU: 13:53
Oh yes. I remember my father being very scared for me, telling me not to sign anything, but he grew up in a very scary time.

IG: 14:17
So just tell me a little bit about the political activity that was taking place on campus at the time.

LU: 14:24
Well, we all became very-very anti-war, and we knew people who were a little bit ahead of us, who were actually being drafted and being sent to Vietnam. And um-

IG: 14:48
How-

LU: 14:49
I-I when I remember, I married someone from Harpur, my first husband was Ricky Youngerlighter, and he went to medical school, and I remember after we were desperate-desperate to get him sent to some place safe. And so, he accepted a- he was offered to go to Oklahoma for two years to work with Indians, which is what we did.

IG: 15:33
That must have been a really eye-opening experience, right? What did you see-

LU: 15:40
It was not. Well. So, Oklahoma is the only place where there are no reservations. So, he simply worked in a clinic, but it was not a very nice place to be.

IG: 16:00
So, did this happen after you earned your degree?

LU: 16:06
It was after. It was just when I got my PhD.

IG: 16:11
I see.

LU: 16:12
And he had just finished his medical internship at Albert Einstein.

IG: 16:18
Yeah. So, you know, returning a little bit to the student organizing. Where did it take place? How many people were involved? Do you remember? Was there just a handful of friends?

LU: 16:38
Oh, no, it was, I mean, Harpur was a very, very progressive school, and so it was, it was almost universal on campus about being involved.

IG: 16:53
So large numbers of people went to march on Washington. Did you protest in town at all?

LU: 17:06
That, I do not remember.

IG: 17:08
On campus?

LU: 17:09
There was nothing to protest on campus. The campus was, who would you protest against on campus?

IG: 17:20
I have heard of protests on campus.

LU: 17:23
I see, I do not remember that.

IG: 17:24
You do not remember those. So, did you go to Washington to protest since the Vietnam War?

LU: 17:34
The marches on Washington were actually after I graduated.

IG: 17:40
I see, I see, I see.

LU: 17:43
It was- that would be (19)68 and that was that would be two years after I graduated.

IG: 17:48
After you graduated. So, did you belong to any other student clubs? Were you active in any-

LU: 18:02
Not that I recall, no.

IG: 18:10
Did you feel at the time that the expectations of women students were different than of male students at all? Were you protesting against? Did you have any sense of the feminist movement or that was too early.

LU: 18:30
I think that was too early.

IG: 18:32
Yeah.

LU: 18:38
I think that was too early.

IG: 18:41
Did you chafe at the restrictions that existed for women students, such as curfews, earlier curfews for women than for men?

LU: 18:55
I do not think I- it even occurred to me.

IG: 19:05
Um, so apart from your organizing for you know, to protest against the Vietnam War, what were some of the significant events on campus at the time, and how did you feel about them?

LU: 19:26
The one thing I remember, I remember walking over the Esplanade and hearing about Jack Kennedy's death. That was amazing. I remember that was um-

IG: 19:45
Just remind us who Jack Anderson?

LU: 19:47
No, John F, Kennedy.

IG: 19:50
John F, Kennedy. Of course.

LU: 19:51
President.

IG: 19:52
Of course.

LU: 19:53
Died while I was a student at Harpur.

IG: 19:57
Right.

LU: 19:58
And we all adored him.

IG: 20:03
Yes.

LU: 20:06
So that seemed like the end of an era.

IG: 20:16
Yeah, I remember that day, too. So, you know how-

LU: 20:26
Yes, I do not know if I can talk about this.

IG: 20:30
Talk, turn it off.

LU: 20:31
Turn it off. So, one thing that I do remember vividly is discovering drugs at Harpur, I had barely even had alcohol when I arrived. I was only 16 at the time, when I started.

IG: 20:56
Just very young.

LU: 20:57
Yes, and within a year, it was just drugs were just everywhere.

IG: 21:06
Right.

LU: 21:07
And no- no one was drinking anymore. People were just smoking pot all the time.

IG: 21:19
What- did that contribute to your understanding of an interest in psychology? Or was just that a release and no part of the culture? Yeah.

LU: 21:29
Part of the culture of when you went to parties, you smoked pot, you danced, listened to live music.

IG: 21:36
What were you listening to? What music were you listening to?

LU: 21:40
The rolling- it started with the Beatles and turned it into the Rolling Stones.

IG: 21:46
Did you feel that that sort of contributed to any kind of political, your politicization, or not?

LU: 21:56
Part of the whole culture at the time.

IG: 22:00
Uh-huh, which meant anti-establishment, or what did it mean for you? Breaking boundaries?

LU: 22:13
It meant that all the rules were different. You did not need to follow your parent’s rules anymore. You had you set your own rules, and I-I remember each vacation going home, feeling more and more anxious as I would get closer and closer to home and feeling when I would leave home free and liberated. And it is odd because I became very establishment later. I followed a very traditional course, getting a PhD. I did not tune out.

IG: 23:10
And you got married, which also-

LU: 23:12
[crosstalk] right, at a young age.

IG: 23:16
At a young age, and you were thinking, yet it was an enlarging experience, and-

LU: 23:22
It was totally wonderful. I look back on those days, it just totally liberating for me.

IG: 23:34
What-what were some of the things that you saw differently during those years that you had, you mentioned that your clothes had changed.

LU: 23:47
It was, it was all against consumption.

IG: 23:53
I see.

LU: 23:53
what- I mean. The whole thing about our parents’ generation was acquisition to get the best the home, what you wore, the car, kind of car you drove, and we were very much against that acquisitiveness. It was good to just wear jeans.

IG: 24:29
And yet you were all as a group, very determined students.

LU: 24:35
We were all very determined and motivated. And I guess many of us went on to make a lot of money.

IG: 24:45
Yes, and yes, and accomplish and be successful. Absolutely. This is my experience interviewing the 20 or so people I have interviewed so far. So how did you, how did you envision your future?

LU: 25:02
I had zero vision. I-I feel like my entire life has been accidental. It has just been follow my nose where it leads me. So, I went to NYU because I wanted to go back to New York City, not because, well, a little because of the program, but I picked NYU because of all the programs there. It had a good program in experimental psychology [crosstalk]But my main goal was to get back to New York City.

IG: 25:46
Right. I see, I see.

LU: 25:53
And then after getting my degree, it was I went to Oklahoma for two years just so that my husband could be in the Public Health Service and serve Indians. And then I wound up at Stanford doing a postdoc, because he went to Stanford to do his residency, so I just had to be at Stanford.

IG: 26:26
So, when were you at Stanford? What were you years?

LU: 26:29
That was (19)72 to (19)75.

IG: 26:35
And what was that experience?

LU: 26:38
So that I transitioned from psychology into neuroscience. I started doing brain research in monkeys there, and that set my future.

IG: 26:58
So did you continue in the stimulation of [crosstalk]

LU: 27:02
No, I know, I [crosstalk] I-I discovered Karl Pribram [Karl Harry Pribram] at Stanford. And-

IG: 27:14
Who was he?

LU: 27:15
He is a he is often called the Magellan of the brain. He is a neuroscientist who started out as a neurosurgeon and then decided that he needed to do experimental lesions in the monkeys to look at the effects on perception and memory, and he became my mentor at Stanford, and I started looking at perception in monkeys and perceptual deficits that occur after various kinds of brain damage, and that set my career. So, it sort of changed me from rodent work to non-human primate work.

IG: 28:25
But, you know, still along a kind of a continuum, right?

LU: 28:31
Yeah.

IG: 28:32
Because you are working with parts of the brain and seeing what effect they have on behavior.

LU: 28:38
Absolutely.

IG: 28:39
So, what kind of things did you learn from-from your years at Stanford, were, you know, what, what kind of, what kind of things were you seeing in the monkeys?

LU: 28:55
So, we were creating lesions of what was called extra stride cortex, not primary visual cortex, so it was more like association cortex, and we were getting minimal impairments. And I presented this work at a society, one of the earliest Society for Neuroscience meetings. I think it was in (19)74 or (197)5. And at that meeting, another scientist, all established scientist came up to me and said, "You know, we are getting very, very different results from yours." And he said, "I think you should come to my lab for a few years, and we can sort this out." And he introduced himself as Mort Mishkin [Mortimer Mishkin], who was very established, renowned neuroscientist.

IG: 30:21
And where was he?

LU: 30:22
He was here at the National Institute of Mental Health. And so, I came to do a second postdoc with Mishkin, and that really set my trajectory in science.

IG: 30:40
So, what kind of things were you seeing differently?

LU: 30:45
So, we were getting minimal effects-

LU: 30:47
-of these lesions, and he was getting massive effects. And these lesions were supposed to presumably disconnect primary visual cortex from higher order perceptual processing areas. And so, if the lesion is supposed to disconnect, you should get a massive result. And when I arrived here, we decided, oh, well, we do not actually know what tissue to remove to produce the disconnection.

IG: 30:47
I see.

IG: 31:33
Right.

LU: 31:35
And so, he said, “Well, in order to figure that out, you are going to have to learn some more anatomy, neuroanatomy."

IG: 31:45
Right.

LU: 31:46
And for the next 20 years, I did neuroanatomical experiments laying out the anatomy of the visual cortex.

IG: 31:56
So, you would lay out the anatomy, but somebody else would conduct the surgery, actually, where there was-

LU: 32:05
No, I-I-

IG: 32:06
You did all of that, you learned all of this.

LU: 32:11
And in the process of doing that, and also, we were doing behavioral experiments in parallel. Together, Mishkin and I discovered what we later called two cortical visual systems. There is a system projecting they both originate in the primary visual cortex, but one projects ventrally into the temporal lobe, and one projects dorsally into the parietal lobe, and the ventral system is specialized for recognizing what an object is, and the dorsal system is specialized for recognizing where an object is, and that discovery or that conceptualization is what earned me election to the National Academy of Sciences.

LU: 33:26
When did that happen?

LU: 33:33
That was in 2000.

IG: 33:44
Did it change your life?

LU: 33:48
It was pretty wonderful.

IG: 33:50
Yeah.

LU: 33:50
It was, it was pretty amazing. It probably did. I mean, I was already a lab chief at the time, but the recognition that you get from other scientists is just amazing. And of course, you know, my parents were just over the moon.

IG: 34:21
What did they say about you?

LU: 34:23
They would, oh, they just, you know, they just-

IG: 34:41
Yeah, it is wonderful. It is a wonderful thing. You probably got a lot more media attention, right?

LU: 34:48
Well-

IG: 34:48
A lot more people wanted to do interviews with you.

LU: 34:52
That happened, but often, if there would be a scientific discovery, the media would contact me to ask, what did I think about it? You know, what, what was, what were the implications, things like that. And of course, then I was named to many advised scientific advisory boards-

IG: 35:18
Such as.

LU: 35:19
Yeah, for example, the group or foundation which awards a lot of money is philanthropic.

IG: 35:31
So, you have a, you really have a say in determining who receives a grant. That is that is very major in your line of work.

LU: 35:42
And for example, I sit on the brain and Behavior Research Foundation, which gives out a lot of money.

IG: 35:54
The- you know the field has advanced over the years that you have been a scientist, what are you know- what are some of the future directions in your line of work?

LU: 36:10
Well, I-I think genetics that, I mean, I think, I think in all of medicine, I think genetics is really going to have a profound influence. The field of neurology has made a lot of advances, not so much psychiatry, and I think there are still profound discoveries to be made in psychiatry.

IG: 36:53
And DNA plays a big role in that.

LU: 36:56
We are still sort of sorting that out. What can we learn from, you know, the genetics of psychiatric illness?

IG: 37:07
Is that what you are studying now?

LU: 37:09
Yeah, I am- I collaborate.

IG: 37:11
You collaborate. What are just clinicians with clinicians? What are just some of the insights? It is a fascinating.

LU: 37:18
Well, I mean, I think we are at the starting point. So, for example, we do not know at all what causes autism. Why there is a rise in the rate of autism? Is it environmental in combination with genetic glitches? We have no idea.

IG: 37:46
Do you think it may just be a question of it being diagnosed better?

LU: 37:55
Some people suggest that. But others say no.

IG: 38:05
Do you know the work of Dr. Fishback, Jerry Fishback [Dr. Gerald Fishback]?

LU: 38:16
In New York?

IG: 38:19
Yes-yes. So, he, I mean, I know that he is an autism expert-expert, and he was my, I worked with him, not as a scientist, but as a fundraiser at Columbia Medical Center. And I know he went on to the Simons Foundation, and so I have seen him on television,

LU: 38:40
And used to be at NIH in fact.

IG: 38:46
Did your paths ever cross?

LU: 38:48
Oh, yeah.

IG: 38:48
Yes.

LU: 38:49
I have had dinner at his home.

IG: 38:50
Oh, wow, it is a small world.

LU: 38:53
Yeah.

IG: 38:54
It is a small world. It is of specialists. So, what did you see your future work in?

LU: 39:04
My future, I have no future. I mean, I think I am. I am at the end of my career; the future is with the young people now entering the field. I mean, I feel like I am- I have lived my life as a scientist. I have achieved my goals, and it is time for me to pass that on to younger people.

IG: 39:42
So, are you mentoring currently, scientists?

LU: 39:44
Oh, I have a lab full of post docs and one graduate student who I mentor.

IG: 39:53
And what kind of experiments are you working on?

LU: 39:56
So, what we are working on now is mainly, how do we identify faces, and how do we recognize different facial expressions. And we are also working with a group of patients who have what is called Mobius Syndrome.

IG: 40:34
And what is that?

LU: 40:35
It is a defect. It is a genetic disease resulting in a defect in the seventh cranial nerve, and as a result, these people experience facial paralysis, which means they cannot make facial expressions. It is actually a newly recognized disease, and they have varying extents. It is, it is so well recognized now that they often go in for facial surgery so that the surgeon can so that they are left with a slight smile right on their face. But we have, we have seen some adults who only recently learned that they have this syndrome, this illness, they were never diagnosed as children.

IG: 41:55
So, they are unable to emote with their face right also, it has to do with-with recognizing others.

LU: 42:07
We are looking at right now, and what we are finding is that they actually are impaired in recognizing-

IG: 42:16
In both ways.

LU: 42:17
-others facial expressions. And so, we think that one learns about to recognize facial expressions by imitating others expressions and then getting feedback from one's own musculature.

IG: 42:38
That is, that is enormous. That is great. That is a great insight. Thank you. I feel privileged to learn this.

LU: 42:51
And so, and we are also looking at what are the which of the areas of the brain. We do a lot of brain imaging in our work.

IG: 42:59
Right.

LU: 42:59
And so, we are looking at which of the areas of the brain that get activated when one recognizes emotional expression.

IG: 43:08
I am just wondering the people with Mobius, could they have been misdiagnosed as having some kind of Asperger's or social impairment? Is that ever the case?

LU: 43:25
Not the people that we have been seeing?

IG: 43:29
I see, okay, so that is, that is, that is really so what is-

LU: 43:37
But I should tell you that we are also seeing a difference between our younger patients and our adult patients.

LU: 43:48
How so?

LU: 43:48
In that the younger ones do not seem to have this impairment, and we were, there is a conference that is taking place in May, and because they have established a huge network now that this syndrome is recognized, and we want to understand, since it is recognized at such a young age, do they undergo training that enables them to overcome the impairment that we see in the adults?

IG: 44:32
So, are you working with therapists of some kind, or?

LU: 44:36
There is a whole group of people-

IG: 44:39
There is a whole group of people, I am sure.

LU: 44:40
-at NIH.

IG: 44:42
Do you think that you are responding, or are you one of the innovators, or?

LU: 44:48
We just, we just found out.

IG: 44:51
You found out. So, you actually, you made a discovery.

LU: 44:55
We just attached, or we just found out about this group of patients. And we just thought, oh, this is really interesting. Let us test this idea about the recognition.

IG: 45:13
I completely understand. So, when did this happen?

LU: 45:17
Within the last two years.

IG: 45:18
Within the last two years, has it been published? Have any papers been writing-

LU: 45:22
[crosstalk] writing up our first paper now.

IG: 45:27
That is tremendous. So, you actually have identified a disorder.

LU: 45:34
Well, we did not identify Mobius. We identified this impairment.

IG: 45:40
You identify the impairment so and then the causes of it.

LU: 45:46
And that is what we are writing, yeah, exactly.

IG: 45:49
That is, that is tremendous. That is, that is tremendous. So, you know, how do you I have to go back to Harpur College and Binghamton. Do you think that your- that this early experience in any way prepared you for the just extremely interesting life that you have had of taking risks and in your career and kind of going with your almost gut instinct, or is that a personality trait?

LU: 46:31
It is hard to know.

IG: 46:32
It is hard to know.

LU: 46:34
It was, I think for me, it was the perfect fit because it was the school was, at the time, very small and intimate and everyone, you felt this sense of really belonging, and-and yet safe, where you could sort of express yourself, explore your ideas. So, it was really well suited for me.

IG: 47:12
Right-right.

LU: 47:14
And-and I think it really gave me the confidence to go out into the world and become something I think maybe for a lot of us.

IG: 47:29
That is what I am hearing.

LU: 47:30
Because we all became pretty accomplished.

IG: 47:33
Yes-yes, it was it. You know, somebody said that it was a- the experience of an elite liberal arts college at a state university [crosstalk] and it gave exposure to many disciplines that you otherwise would not have experienced. You know, you know somebody who is listening to this interview, a student now or later, do you have any advice for this student on how to navigate their- you know, undergraduate career, what should they be thinking about it? What is the biggest lesson that you learned throughout your life?

LU: 48:30
Follow your instincts, whatever feels good, right and good, go down that path.

IG: 48:39
Hmm, and that is, that is really the lesson of your life.

LU: 48:46
Totally.

IG: 48:47
Right.

LU: 48:50
I mean, even when I arrived here at NIH to do a second postdoc, I had no clue I would get tenure become a lab chief. It did not occur to me, it just it felt good being here, and I loved what I was doing, and so I would just encourage everyone do what you love to do.

IG: 49:22
How long have you been at the NIH?

LU: 49:24
Since 1975.

IG: 49:32
And how do you-you must have had highs and lows in that career.

LU: 49:36
So-

IG: 49:37
So how do you persevere when, when you are going through the valley?

LU: 49:42
In, I think it was in 1978 my postdoc was ending, and that was it. There was no it was ending. That was it. And there was no position for me. And I started looking around what was available in the area. I was looking at administrative positions on the National Research Council. I remember going on interviews, and then another scientist in a different institute, also doing perceptual work, said, "You know, Leslie, I am just, I am getting a new lab. I have these positions. I do not want to fill them yet, I but I want to hold them. I am afraid I will lose them. So can I slip you in to a position you can still work with Mort Michigan, yes, but you will hold that slot for me." And so, I said, "Sign me up." And I did. And then two years later, Mishkin got a real ft, full time employee slot. He put me in it and-

IG: 51:41
And you were already kind of in the groove of that work, and you were enjoying.

LU: 51:44
Right.

IG: 51:45
Yeah, so just so maybe to be open to experience and to-to opportunity, and to just hang on.

LU: 51:59
Hang on, hang in there.

IG: 52:04
Do you have any concluding remarks? Is there anything that you would like to talk about?

LU: 52:19
[crosstalk] say that I still look back on my college days at Harpur as just among the best of my life I really turned into a real person there. I made great friends, friends for life, really. they were very happy years.

IG: 53:05
Thank you. Thank you very much.

(End of Interview)

2018-03-16

Irene Gashurov

1966

Leslie G. Ungerleider

Dr. Ungerleider is an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, and Chief of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health. Ungerleider has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2000), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (2001), and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2009 she received the William James Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science in recognition of how her research advanced our understanding of brain function and its relevance to public health and also for her mentorship of young researchers.

Audio

Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni at the National Institute of Mental Health; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the National Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni living in the DC area

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Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni at the National Institute of Mental Health; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – Alumni elected to the National Academy of Sciences; Harpur College – in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni living in the DC area.