30 Facts About Arnold Scheibel

Arnold Bernard Scheibel was an American neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry and neuroanatomy, and the former director of the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Arnold Scheibel is well known for his research regarding the anatomy of the spinal cord, brain stem, and cerebral cortex.

Arnold Scheibel introduced the concept of modular organization in the nervous system.

Arnold Scheibel demonstrated the correlations between human cognitive activity and structural change, and emphasized the role of plasticity in the living reactive brain.

Arnold Scheibel was born on January 18,1923, and raised in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Arnold Scheibel won a scholarship to Horace Mann School, but did not enjoy high school biology classes.

Arnold Scheibel accepted the offer, which required a minimum of 2 years of service following his medical training.

Arnold Scheibel did a 15-month internship at the old Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Arnold Scheibel did two years of active service with the United States Army Medical Corps at Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio.

Arnold Scheibel was even asked by the Hogg Foundation to open a child guidance clinic in Austin, but he declined.

Arnold Scheibel felt that he was missing something, and it was not until after an introduction to Warren McCulloch in Chicago that his excitement was renewed.

In June 1950, Arne and Mila Arnold Scheibel set out for Chicago to work at Warren Mculloch's laboratory at Illinois Psychiatric Institute.

Arnold Scheibel thought of this method as a "kind of melding of science and art", and "he knew of no excitement and satisfaction such as that offered by the Golgi method".

At the University of Tennessee Medical Center at Memphis, Arnold Scheibel secured a joint appointment at the departments of Psychiatry and Anatomy, and Mila and he were given their own laboratory.

Arnold Scheibel spent his mornings working in the psychiatric ward, and spent his afternoons and evenings with Mila in the laboratory.

At UCLA, Arnold Scheibel had joint appointments in the Departments of Neurobiology and Psychiatry.

Arnold Scheibel was surprised at the axonal organization of large reticular cells, as some had bifurcating axons projecting both into the spinal cord as well as the diencephalon.

Arnold Scheibel began to branch out from anatomy to physiology, and he used postnatal kittens as a model for investigating cortical and subcortical electrical rhythms.

Arnold Scheibel could tell that this observation was not due to simple fatigue, since he saw that a slight change to the input restored the original intensity and thus it was clear that these reticular neurons were excited by novelty and were turned off by the familiar.

Additionally, since the cyclical patterns between periods of sensitivity and insensitivity were mutually exclusive, Arnold Scheibel hypothesized that this might be a mechanism to prevent "individual neurons from being drawn increasingly into the input-output transactions of single neural domains".

In 1962, the Brain Research Institute at UCLA was created and with Mila's continued illness, Arnold Scheibel started doing all of his research at home, having a technician provide all the Golgi stained material.

However, through comparing samples of the reticular core of neonatal rats with those of adult rats, Arnold Scheibel found that although the dendrites of neonatal neurons are spine covered and project to the surrounded neuropil, the dendrites of mature neurons are spineless and are grouped into bundles just like motor neuron soma.

Arnold Scheibel continued to utilize Golgi techniques during his time at UCLA to study temporal lobe epilepsy, where he published his findings that supported the hypothesis that the disease was progressive.

Arnold Scheibel spent time working as a psychiatric consultant for Camarillo State Hospital, at which he encountered primarily patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Arnold Scheibel was able to obtain brain tissue samples from people with schizophrenia that were about to be discarded from the hospital, and he then focused his research around studying this disease using Golgi techniques.

Arnold Scheibel found it difficult to forget "Marian's dynamic personality and sensitivity," and as a result, their relationship grew for several years.

In 1987, Arnold Scheibel became the acting director of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, followed by promotion to Director by 1990 until 1995.

Arnold Scheibel could draw any brain structure, any cross section, at any angle with ease.

Arnold Scheibel was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1983.

Arnold Scheibel died on April 3,2017, in Oakland, California, at the age of 94.