Elizabeth Gould (psychologist)

Elizabeth Gould is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She was an early investigator of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus.

Gould discovered evidence of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb of rats, marmosets and macaque monkeys. In her early studies, she laid the groundwork for understanding the relationship between stress and adult neurogenesis. Specifically, she and Dr. Heather A. Cameron reported on adrenal steroid control of adult neurogenesis in rat dentate gyrus. Additionally, her work has provided evidence of neurogenesis in the adult primate neocortex. Gould and the researchers reported new neurons in adult marmoset monkeys are added to three neocortical association areas important in cognitive function: the prefrontal, inferior temporal and posterior parietal cortex. The new neurons appeared to originate in the subventricular zone, where stem cells giving rise to other cell types are located. They then migrate through the white matter to the neocortex, extending axons. Continual addition of neurons in adulthood apparently contributes to association neocortex functions.

She was born in 1962 and Gould received her Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience in 1988 at UCLA. In 1989, she was a post-doc working in the lab of Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, investigating the effect of stress hormones on rat brains. Chronic stress is devastating to neurons, and Gould’s research focused on the death of cells in the hippocampus. (Pasko Rakic's declaration that there was no such thing as neurogenesis was entrenched dogma at that time.) The research was exciting because stress research was a booming field at that time also. However, it was extremely hard work necessitating killing her rats at various time points, pluck their tiny brains out of their cranial encasing, cut through their cortex, slice the hippocampus thinner than a sheet of paper, and with great care count the dying neurons under a microscope. While Gould was documenting the degeneration of these brains, she happened upon something seemingly inexplicable. Evidence pointed to the idea that the brain might also heal itself.

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