FSU professor studies brains all over the world

By Bayard Stern

Assistant editor, Florida State Times

It may seem remote - making speeches in Russia, studying marsupial brains in Australia and frequenting the world's brain libraries.

But when 10,000 scientists from all over the world are interested, and home folks with strokes or brain tumors might be helped, grants begin to show up.

And one neuroscientist and psychology professor at FSU, Karen Glendenning, 50, brought in the grants.

And made the speeches. Recently, she spoke to the International Congress of Physiological Sciences, a gathering of about 10,000 in St. Petersburg. Her subject was comparative morphometry (form and structure), specializing in mammals' central auditory system.

Karen Glendenning

Though she doesn't speak much Russian, she does recognize a Florida State shirt.

"I was off the bus and on the street in St. Petersburg for five minutes, and I saw someone with a Florida State T-shirt on," she said. "He helped me out ... What's the likelihood of someone coming here from Russia and immediately finding an American who speaks Russian?"

If she was impressed with the Russians' education, she was not happy about the financial situation of the Russians she knows best, the scientists.

"I didn't realize how bad it is for them; apparently a lot of Russian scientists make very little money....less than a thousand dollars a year," Glendenning said. "Some of them are working two jobs just to support their families. And I think our government is afraid that they'll be totally out of science unless they're helped."

Glendenning and others work closely with a few Russian scientists.

One grant is for study of the acoustic chiasm (intersection of nerves on the brain). It focuses on auditory information, which comes in on one side of the mammal's brain and is processed on the other side. Glendenning studies the auditory system in the brain.

She also has a National Institute of Health Fogarty International grant, to help Russian scientists.

But Russia isn't the only country that attracts Glendenning.

Because comparing brains and auditory signals is crucial to her research, she also goes to Australia.

"The big thing is to compare marsupials (ex: kangaroos in Australia) and placentals (most other mammals)," she said. "They've been separated 135 million years. They've been geographically isolated, because Australia broke off at that point.

"And when I compared the marsupial profile of their auditory system to the placentals' auditory profile, it wasn't significantly different.

So the system is very stable. ... our brain is really a speck on this long evolution. You would think that the brain is fairly delicate, but it's very stable."

Glendenning has access to brains she needs to see.

"In the comparative research, there are some brain libraries around the world," she said. "I went to Australia and looked at their marsupial brains. I have data on over 60 mammals."

She said her studies involve more then pure neuroscience.

"One thing to say about my research is that it's inderdisciplinary," she said. "It has behavior, anatomy and chemistry."

She thinks her work will help gain information about the brain that is of clinical importance to victims of stroke, brain tumors (particularly acoustic neuromas) and other neurological diseases.

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