The research grant begins in April and will investigate the "inhibition of exercise by a viscerosomatic reflex arising from the cardiopulmonary region."
Called an "R2" or "First Award," the grant enables a new investigator to make the transition to independent investigator. This grant is Dr. Pickar's second from the NIH, and third he has received overall.
In April, Dr. Pickar completed a three-year National Research Service Award (NSRA), also under the auspices of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH. This postdoctoral fellowship award has allowed Dr. Pickar to work with Dr. Marc P. Kaufman in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at UC Davis to study the responses of group III and IV muscle afferents to exercise. Like the award given to Dr. Partap Singh Kahlsa (see the September 11, 1992 issue of "DC"), this NSRA award was at the highest possible level.
Currently Dr. Pickar and Dr. Rob McLain, an orthopedic surgeon at UC Davis, are in the second year of a two-year, $145,000 grant awarded in February of 1992 from the Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF). The study will determine the "distribution and response properties of afferent nerve endings in the lumbar paraspinal tissues in an animal model." Dr. Pickar is the co-investigator and Dr. McLain is the principal investigator.
Dr. Pickar received a liberal arts degree from Brown University in 1973, and graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1977. In 1978, Dr. Pickar began teaching spinal anatomy at Pacific States Chiropractic College (became Life College of Chiropractic West in 1981). From 1978 to 1979 he was the director of student services at Pacific States and at Northern California College of Chiropractic (became Palmer College of Chiropractic West in 1980). He was a teaching assistant in physiology at UC Davis from 1984 to 1986, instructing undergraduates in the subjects of physiology, analysis of vertebrae structure, introduction to biology, and embryology.
From 1989-90, Dr. Pickar was tutoring medical student in physiology at the UC Davis School of Medicine, where in 1990, he completed his PhD in physiology.
Dr. Pickar has had numerous articles published in the prestigious Journal of Applied Physiology, the American Journal of Veterinary Research, the Journal of Neurophysiology, and the American Journal of Physiology; his abstracts have been published in the FASEB Journal and The Physiologist, among other publications.
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