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VOL. 74 (3), 387-408, 2008 FINE TUNING NEUROMODULATION BY ADENOSINE...

que essas sinapses, repetidas em míriadas de células, são a base
orgânica do pensamento. A vida psíquica normal depende do bom
funcionamento sináptico; e as perturbações mentais provêm do
desarranjo das sinapses», In «Como consegui realizar a
leucotomia prefrontal». Conferências Médicas Literárias VI,
strongly support my decision to go into basic research to study
synapses.

Two other important reasons that encouraged my interests on the
Neuromuscular Junction came from my readings of Claude Bernard,
(1813-1878), one of my scientific heroes. In 1849 he wrote the
important paper on «Action physiologique des venins (curare)»,
published at C. R. Sceances Soc. Biol. Ses Fil. 1: 90 where he states
that «Chez lez animaux le système nerveux et musculaire met tous ces
organes en sympathie ou en rapport les uns avec les autres», and in the
Physiology Course at the Univ. of Paris in the Sommaire de la «Vingt
et uniéme leçon, delivered on 28 mai 1856, he wrote: “le curare est
sans action sur les organes actifs de la circulation, et il n’enléve pas au
sang ses aptitudes physiologiques”. —Action du curare sur le systéme
nerveux: il abolit les manifestations du systéme nerveux et laisse
intact le systéme musculaire—. On peut prouver par lá que la
contractilité musculaire et l’excitabilité des nerfs moteurs sont deux
propriétés distinctes». The second important reason was the work
by the Nobel prize winners, Bernard Katz, Ulf Von Euler and Julius
Axelrod awarded jointly in 1970 for their discoveries concerning the
humoral transmitters in the nerve terminals and the mechanism
for their storage, release and inactivation. It happens that one of the
scientific «dilet» sons of Bernard Katz was Bernard Ginsborg just
moving in early seventies to the University of Edinburgh, where he
was going to be my supervisor.

ADENOSINE AND THE NEUROMUSCULAR JUNCTION

In the late sixties Bernard Katz and Paul Fatt taught Bernard
Ginsborg the secrets of Neuromuscular Transmission at the Univ
Coll, Lond. When Bernard Ginsborg moved to Edinburgh he started
to study the physiology and pharmacology of the Neuromuscular
Junction, and together with his post-doc, David Hirst. They were the

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