Dr. Apostolos P. Georgopoulos is driven to discover how the brain works as a dynamic system.

by M.J. Pehl

Professor Apostolos Georgopoulos wants to show off the magazine covers that feature him. In conference room adjacent to his office, he points to a framed cover of Diagnostic Imaging on the wall. "That's me!" he says proudly of the seemingly abstract yet colorful image. "Well, actually," he laughs, and explains the scan, "It's my brain."

Back in his office at the Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis, where he's the director of the Brain Sciences Center, Georgopoulos situates himself behind his sprawling desk. Books are neatly stacked across its surface, on topics ranging from agnosia and apraxia to statistical methods. Georgopoulos is a professor of neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry in the department of neuroscience in the Medical School, and director of the university's Center for Cognitive Sciences. He's one of the world's leading authorities on neural mechanisms underlying movement.

On this day, the Greek-born Georgopoulos gets down to business: the correct pronunciation of his name. "Georg-op-oulos", he says. "The emphasis is on the second syllable - people always want to hit the third syllable." He was born in Patras, Greece, and hit the ground running. "My mother said that when I was seven, I proclaimed I would be a researcher," he says. As a youth, his interests were as varied as the books on his desk. He was a skilled chess player and won several trophies. He fell in love with geometry ("Algebra was just too easy.") In high school he became interested in science; he also wrote a few papers on linguistics and speculates that too might have been a viable career option. The son of an Orthodox priest, Georgopoulos also contemplated becoming a priest.

The family moved to Athens, and Georgopoulos considered possible career paths. At that time, professional opportunities were limited: one could become a physician, lawyer or engineer. "I ended up in medical school by default", he says, and he pops out of his chair to dig through his files in search of a paper he published in his second year of medical school. (He points out its 44 pages and 171 reference - all in his native Greek.) Georgopoulos had become fascinated with the brain and behavior, and he read psychoanalytical research extensively. He was certain he would be a psychiatrist, and he knew he'd need a thorough grasp of biology so Georgopoulos he took a research assistantship in physiology. His first seminar was attended by fellow medical students, one of whom took a fancy to him during the presentation. Georgopoulos decided against becoming a psychoanalyst after all. "I didn't have the guts to tell people what was good for them!" he admits. But he ended he marrying the afore-mentioned fellow medical student.

Georgopoulos received his medical degree and PhD in physiology in Athens, and realized his real love was scientific research. "I was in the lab day and night," he recollects. "I loved the novelty, the discovery of new solutions to problems." But because Greece lacked the necessary infrastructure for research in neurophysiology, it did not seem to be a viable option for earning a living. Then Georgopoulos happened to read a paper by Vernon Mountcastle and was intrigued by his work in brain electrophysiology. That settled it: he wrote to Dr. Mountcastle and asked to train in his lab. Georgopoulos decided to devote himself to brain electrophysiology and understanding how neural networks produced behavior. "I wanted to understand why people behave as they do, what drives us, what motivates us," he says. "The brain is so complex, there are a huge number of variables, the only way to get a glimpse of it is to study these neural networks."

It had become obvious that the brain didn't work as a single cell, and Georgopoulos wanted to understand the interactions among neurons. Working with monkeys, Georgopoulos wanted to discover what was at the root of whole arm movements, not just single joint movements: he was interested in the intention of the monkey to move its arm. From this, he says, "You can predict what the movement is going to be - you can extract the uniqueness of the movement."

But after a two-year post-doc stint at Johns Hopkins with Vernon Mountcastle, where he also studied hundreds of pain fibers (still a world record), he missed home something awful, and returned to Athens. There were still no sufficient systems in place to support his research and he was back to Johns Hopkins for a time, where he ascended the faculty ranks to become full professor of neuroscience in 1986. In 1991, the University of Minnesota and the Veterans Hospital offered him a position - and a lab. His work with monkey motor cortex continued. Georgopoulos has developed procedures, the first of their kind, to analyze relations between spatial signals in the brain. "We want to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes in motor behavior and to understand the intrinsic mechanisms of the cerebral cortex," he explains. His research also explores how the behavior of neurons affect their responses to the signals of other neurons - in other words, neurons may fire in patterns based on previous firings. What does this mean in terms of practical application? There are many possibilities, but for starters: "We could be using non-invasive brain signals to operate prosthetics," says Georgopoulos.

Then one day in 2005, President Bruininks called Georgopoulos in New Zealand, where he was participating in a lecture series, to tell him he'd been named a Regents Professor. "Of course it was a surprise!" he says, wide-eyed. "I knew I was nominated, but I am enough of a realist to not take it for granted!"

"And it was a fantastic honor," Georgopoulos adds.

"Dr. Georgopoulos is a world-class scientist who brings an active imagination to bear on some of the most important puzzles in neuroscience," said President Bruininks says.

Georgopoulos still gets very excited about his work. It is clear in the way he displays the images of his brain scan on the magazine cover. It's clear as he insists on showing off newest piece of equipment in his lab. And he continues to be a multi-tasker bar none. Over the years, Georgopoulos' interest in linguistics never waned and he has found time to acquire six languages, the latest being Spanish. He no longer participates in chess tournaments however. "You like to play a game for its beauty - but now its become too competitive," he reflects. "I don't like lose!" He is a jazz aficionado and in fact, plays saxophone. ("Sort of," he laughs. And of course: "I love data analysis," he says, affectionately patting a couple of books on his desk.

Ask him what he does in his spare time - if there is such a thing - and Georgopoulos says without hesitation "More work!"