268 KOPIN
At that time, Kety had organized seminars during which there was
discussion of various biological factors that might be involved in schizo
phrenia. Due to my interest in this area and the study that I had under
taken, Kety asked me to join the Research Associates Program. There
was considerable excitement about the putative role of amines in brain
function and in amine metabolism as a means for evaluating amine
activity. Discussions included descriptions of the several theories that
were being proposed about the biological basis of schizophrenia, all of
which were being examined and ultimately disproved. Because so much
effort had been expended over a number of years in the failed efforts to
identify a biochemical abnormality as the basis for the psychotic symp
toms, Kety referred to the study of the biological basis of schizophrenia
as the graveyard of biochemists. Extraordinary findings were reported,
but later it was found that the findings had a rational basis unrelated
to schizophrenia. Since amino acids were the precursors of the biogenic
amines, each of us tackled the hypotheses associated with compounds
derived from a particular amino acid. Tryptophan, the precursor of
serotonin was my area. Phenylalanine and tyrosine, the precursors of
catecholamines and adrenochrome, an oxidation product of epineph
rine that had been suggested by Canadian psychiatrist, Abram Hoffer,
as an endogenous hallucinogen in schizophrenics, became Julius
Axelrod’s domain.
At that time–the end of the 1950s–there was a revolution in the
approach to understanding and the treatment of mental illness, par
ticularly of the psychoses. Up to the early 1950s, psychiatry dealt mainly
with interviewing patients; shock therapy with insulin-induced hypo
glycemia or electrical current was the major therapeutic intervention to
attempt to treat psychotic patients. In extreme cases, frontal lobotomy
was an option. By the second half of the decade, there had been a huge
change in perception, a paradigm shift, based on the observations that
chemicals could alter the mind, and the last lobotomy was performed
in 1960.
The discovery of chlorpromazine, monoamine oxidate (MAO) in
hibitors, reserpine, and psychedelic agents was taken as proof that chemi
cals could alter brain function. This provided a strong basis for the concept