F Gonzalez-Lima
Professor, Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy
Professor, Institute for Neuroscience, College of Natural Sciences
Phone: +1 512 475 8497, +1 512 937 8859
Email: gonzalezlima@utexas.edu
Spanish Speaker
Francisco Gonzalez-Lima started an exciting revolution in brain metabolic mapping of learning functions, publishing the first neuroimaging studies of Pavlovian conditioning, behavioral habituation and sensitization, and the first book on brain imaging of learning and behavioral functions (Gonzalez-Lima et al, NATO ASI Vol. D68, 1992). This book was based on the first international conference on this topic that he organized with sponsorship from NATO and NSF.
In 1992, his graduate student A. R. McIntosh and he published a report of the first application of structural equation modeling to neuroscience. This led to a series of pioneering papers on the use of path analysis in neuroimaging that culminated in them organizing an international symposium and the first edited volume on this subject (Gonzalez-Lima and McIntosh, Human Brain Mapping Vol. 2, 1994). After 1992, Gonzalez-Lima and his trainees published a series of studies with their new cytochrome oxidase method, the first enzyme histochemistry method allowing full quantification in terms of calibrated activity units. This approach led to numerous successful studies of cerebral energy metabolic capacity in various species and in Alzheimers disease patients, and to the organization of an international symposium and the first book on this subject (Gonzalez-Lima, 1998).
In 1997, he became Professor and Head of Behavioral Neuroscience, and in several years built this area by recruiting four new assistant professors. In 1999 he received joint appointments as Professor in the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology. In 2000 Dr. Gonzalez-Lima received offers to become director of two neuroscience centers, but he stayed at Austin where he was honored with the first endowed chair named after a Hispanic professor in the USA, the George I. Sanchez Centennial Professorship in Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2002 Dr. Gonzalez-Lima became Director of the Texas Consortium in Behavioral Neuroscience, a multi-million dollar doctoral and postdoctoral research training consortium of five Texas universities. Dr. Gonzalez-Lima has been an invited lecturer at over a hundred institutions (in Europe, USA, Canada, Latin America and Asia) and has served on national and international scientific advisory committees (most recently at the International Affairs Committee of the Society for Neuroscience and US National Academy of Science Committee to the International Brain Research Organization).
In 2012 Dr. Gonzalez-Lima became the founding Chair of the Neuroscience section of the Texas Academy of Science and US Councilor of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society. His laboratory has been at the forefront of neurometabolic studies of animal behavioral functions in the world, translating new interventions for human behavioral disorders and contributing over 300 scientific publications (in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and books).