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Rueben A. Gonzales, Ph.D.
Institute for Neuroscience, University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Gonzales received his PhD from the University of Texas in 1983 and is currently Professor of Pharmacology at UT Austin. His current interests include the effects of ethanol on basic dopaminergic neuronal activity in vivo and the involvement of dopamine in ethanol self-administration behavior. Other research interests include the physical characterization and theoretical description of diffusion behavior of solutes during microdialysis. Two new projects have been undertaken in the lab in the last year: the development of capillary electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescence detection, a new analytical system for detection of neurotransmitters in dialysates and the development of a technique to perform microdialysis in mouse brain.	Dr. Rueben Gonzales

Dr. Gonzales received his PhD from the University of Texas in 1983 and is currently Professor of Pharmacology at UT Austin. His current interests include the effects of ethanol on basic dopaminergic neuronal activity in vivo and the involvement of dopamine in ethanol self-administration behavior. Other research interests include the physical characterization and theoretical description of diffusion behavior of solutes during microdialysis. Two new projects have been undertaken in the lab in the last year: the development of capillary electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescence detection, a new analytical system for detection of neurotransmitters in dialysates and the development of a technique to perform microdialysis in mouse brain.

Image of Dr. Rueben Gonzales
Dr. Rueben Gonzales

Journal for Minority Medical Students(JMMS): What got you interested in science originally?
Dr. Gonzales: Even in elementary school, science was my favorite subject. I was always the one in my family who was curious about how things worked and I was always inventing toys to play with. It seemed very clear as early as junior high that I would pursue science as a career, so by the time I got to high school and college, it was more a matter of which science I would go into. I considered going to medical school and into engineering, but I was always more interested in pure research rather than in treating people or in physics.

JMMS: Were either of your parents in the sciences?
Dr. Gonzales: I’m definitely an anomaly for my family. My mom didn’t finish high school; my dad did, but he didn’t go beyond that.

JMMS: How did you get involved with the NIAAA?
Dr. Gonzales: I’ve been doing alcohol research since graduate school, where I worked in a lab that was funded for NIAAA. I received my first direct NIAAA grant as a postdoctoral fellow.

JMMS: Was alcohol research something you were always interested in?
Dr. Gonzales: Since college, I’ve had an interest in how the brain works and how drugs affect the brain. I wasn’tspecifically interested in doing only alcohol research, but much of my funding has come from NIAAA and so has been targeted to alcohol research.

JMMS: What types of research are you involved in right now?
Dr. Gonzales: The basic question I’m pursuing is what is it about alcohol that causes people to like it and to drink it? So specifically, we’re looking at the dopaminergic system, which is one of the brain chemicals that is thought to be involved in motivation in general and so we believe that alcohol taps into that system.

JMMS: “Motivation”?
Dr. Gonzales: Right, motivation to pursue a goal. And so that happens whether the goal is food when you’re hungry or water when you’re thirsty or the reproductive urges. So we believe that drugs—including ethanol—tap into that natural pathway. The first time a person drinks alcohol, they most likely don’t even like it, but eventually most people, as they get past that, start to like it and then they’ll start to drink it on their own. It’s not like anyone forces them to do it; it’s voluntary consumption. So alcohol is doing something to the brain that’s changing it so that people are then motivated to seek it and consume it on their own. We believe that something goes terribly wrong with this process in some people who suffer from the disease of alcoholism. I’m not studying alcoholism per se in a rat model, because it’s really a human disease, but by studying the basics of these chemical mechanisms, even in a rat brain or mouse brain, some of that is going to carry over to the human situation and so could give clues as to what could be going wrong in humans.

JMMS: Can you give us one of the “aha!” moments that you’ve had with your research?
Dr. Gonzales:Well, we know a lot from other studies about how the brain changes in general—learning and memory, basically—and through my work with a colleague’s lab who studies these more general brain functions, we have discovered together a plausible idea, involving dopamine and some of these other proteins, that explains how alcohol will promote cellular change.To use an analogy, when you learn to ride a bike, that’s a motor skill, you never forget how to ride a bike. You learn it and the brain is changed permanently. It’s still under investigation, but we believe that some of the ways that alcohol changes the brain may also be permanent in a similar manner.

JMMS: Do you ever have minority students working in your lab with you?
Dr. Gonzales: I happen to have two minority students working with me right now. One is a Hispanic student and one is an African American post-doc.

JMMS: How important do you think it is to mentor minorities interested in research?
Dr. Gonzales: It’s absolutely critical. We have to do it so that we can utilize our national workforce to its full potential.

Image of Dr. Christopher Molteno accesses an infant's symbolic play level

Dr. Christopher Molteno, a researcher in Cape Town and a collaborator with Wayne State University, assesses an infant’s symbolic play level.

The University of Cincinnati recently launched a research project related to health disparities and perinatal care, with a special look at alcohol use as a risk factor for prematurity and low birthweight. Shown are collaborators Margaret Shank (left) from the Health Improvement Collorative of GreaterCincinnati, chair of the low birthweight task force, and Janie Allen Blue, Director of the Inner City Health Care Center.