The following is an original production of AZPM News.

You've spent your professional life in the neurosciences and recently you have a very personal story that folds into that.

You were diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I think I knew something was wrong.

I wasn't surprised at all.

I think being a neuroscientist I just thought, okay, my brain, our brains are all different.

My brain right now is going to get a little more different.

This is 'Speaking Personally' filmed on location at the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

Welcome and thanks for joining us.

I'm Tom McNamara and joining me today is retired Regents Professor of Neurosciences at the University of Arizona, Dr.

Leslie Tolbert, Doctor, good to have you.

Thank you for your time and for joining me for a little chat.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for inviting me.

Before we talk about your myriad of successes and your wonderful career that started east and ended up at University of Arizona let's talk about the beginning.

You had a very fascinating young life.

You grew up in Europe, Asia, you were in India.

Tell us about the formative years and Leslie, the little girl.

I'd be happy to because I feel every day that they shaped who I am today.

My mother had grown up in South India because of what her father did and when my parents got married they were interested in international economic development and of course India was the place that sounded most exciting to her.

She convinced my father.

We moved to India and I lived there twice for about three years each time.

In between, we lived in Thailand for a while and we also lived in Indonesia for a while and I feel that those years in Asia really shaped the way I think about things.

Certainly the way I think about the world but also just it was so important to see people of such different walks of life and different religions and just different belief systems every day and to realize we're all different and we're all equally valid with our differences.

So like you say it opens up the world.

It also I guess opens up your mind to all the possibilities which you obviously were open to throughout life that led to your tremendous success.

My tremendous success.

Yes.

I do think that being exposed to a variety of cultures, but it could be a variety of anything in the environment does change the way you think about things.

I think I feel less threatened by difference.

I love difference.

I think that the most interesting conversations are the ones where you're talking to someone who isn't quite like you and who looks at things a different way and that's why I've been involved with interdisciplinary studies here all along, bringing people together with who have different backgrounds allows so much more breadth to the conversation than just sitting down with someone who grew up down the street from you and probably eats the same breakfast you do.

And those are your fondest memories yeah all that exposure all those people the culture like you say the the countries my mother was especially into the culture.

My father went to work every day.

He was a diplomat.

My mother took us into the bazaars in downtown New Delhi.

We went into monkey markets in Indonesia.

We went to crazy, wonderful places that felt normal to me.

I love that normal for me was not what most people think of as normal but the point is that in each place people have a "normal" that is different and I think that it's really important that we all try to broaden our horizons and travel is a wonderful way to begin.

And going from the eastern countries going from Asia you lived in Europe made your way to Harvard once upon a time you checked in there to study math and so now you were a young woman and one night a very interesting thing happened to this math major the next thing that really changed and more or less directed your life.

Tell us about that.

Yes I was in Applied Math and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to apply it to but I liked the idea of application not theory and one night some professors from Harvard Medical School which is across the river from Harvard College came across the river to give the first lecture in a course on neurobiology.

To a bunch of bunch of math majors.

Well it was to a bunch of anybody who would come but it was to a bunch of undergraduates who knew nothing about the brain some of us math some of my to-be husband I didn't know then was in biology he was in the room too.

Right.

And they started talking about the ability to understand functions of the brain in a way that I hadn't ever thought about I hadn't imagined.

They were looking at the cellular organization of parts of the brain and and how nerve cells talk to each other.

I knew right then that that was what I was going to study, work on for the rest of my life and it turns out somebody else in the room Paul St.

John, my husband now, was thinking the same thing in fact there was a small group of us who realized this was the most exciting class we were taking and we started to go out with the one or two of the professors after class for I guess it was beer, I don't drink beer but for something, nearby just to talk about what they had presented in class that day that evening and I just I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be in the room in that moment talking with this professor or two about the inner workings of my brain and it's the kind of excitement that I wish for every undergraduate.

I think we all try as professors and universities to instill that sort of awe and wonder and excitement somehow it felt just so special that I've I've not felt that I've been able to recreate it but the thing that was especially exciting about neuroscience is you cannot understand how the brain works if you don't know some math, some physics, some chemistry and some biology and all four of those things really appealed to me I just found I think I had not known how to major in a science because I couldn't choose one well it turned out neurobiology this field this new field was a synthesis of all of those and it it just was so much fun that many of us became neuroscientists and the subject matter fascinated you did your now husband, Paul, did you sort of feed each other with this excitement about this wonderful new area that's no cinch, neurosciences, but fascinating to you it it is absolutely a part of our marriage.

We got to know each other because of our excitement about this new field and we learned that we each have different areas of expertise that meant that we were sort of complementary if the two of us discussed a problem we got further than either one of us did individually, also just the thrill of the adventure, doing it with someone who then became a life partner was--doesn't get more fun than that.

Yeah, is it I imagine it's fascinating step-by-step as a scientist every step could lead to a new discovery and the next step and the next step, is that often overshadowed by a greater goal when you take on a huge academic challenge like that you know I want to cure disease someday or I want to help understand the brain fully someday, does the greater goal overshadow it or is that step-by-step fascination enough?

I think the step-by-step fascination is definitely enough, there's no way we're going to understand our brains, in in full but, every single year since all those years when ago when I was an undergraduate every year there are hundreds of new findings in neuroscience that change just a little bit the way you look at how we how our brains work there's so much we don't know and especially I would say it's important to focus on understanding diseases of the nervous system as well there's so much we don't know still that I I try to convince students to go into neuroscience all the time it's it's still just an open field waiting for more discovery and you can go into it from math, from physics, from chemistry, you can you can be any sort of curious sciency type and find a niche in in neuroscience.

Once upon a time back in the 80s you came to the University of Arizona to play a role in a major project here in a major change among the disciplines so as much as you're trying to advance the science you're trying to advance young people who may someday achieve what you're working at today but it might not happen until 2070 that's right with someone else so you're developing science and these great young minds and and one of the things that was very exciting about coming to the University of Arizona is that we've had a string of people in leadership, president, provost, who understood, embraced the excitement of working with people across fields.

I don't want to sit in a room full of other Applied Math people and try to solve a big problem alone.

I don't want to sit and I also consider myself a biologist I don't want to sit with just biologists the most fun, because it's the most productive, is to sit with a group of people who come from computer science and physics and chemistry and so on all with different perspectives, different expectations and then different ways of communicating so first you figure out each other's language every science has its own language so you have to learn another language but then you start to realize that ideas fit together and I think the interdisciplinary programs that we have here at the U of A are in large part about that about helping people to see how they can fit their mindset together with the mindsets of the people around them to solve complicated problems and again it's diversity and collaboration I think a very special thing about the University of Arizona is this ability to bring diverse people together to collaborate on interesting, specific projects, look at the space related work that gets done here, but also on sort of health and disease for instance we will get further if we bring in diverse perspectives in any conversation.

In all these years here at the University of Arizona has loved you back from the day you got here just you you stepped up in responsibility and title all the way retiring as a Regent's Professor of Neuroscience.

Tell us about that journey.

It was so much fun to be in a university where I could switch from being a professor in my department and teaching students sort of in the in the local environment to then becoming the head of the Arizona Research Labs which is a very interdisciplinary bunch of programs and then to being the Vice President for Research that was absolutely the most delightful position I was on the sixth floor of the admin building with a view of the mall of the university that I love so just the morning I'd walk in in the morning and this view just made me feel like this is going to be a good day for the university.

But as Vice President for Research I wasn't steering anything I got to help fund good ideas and or not I mean we didn't have enough funding for anything really, but put a little seed money here and there for really interesting ideas and it was for a bunch of years there a very exciting time for the university in the 80s, 90s because there was enthusiasm for very interdisciplinary work and we were finding funds either federal or state funds to do exciting things and I got to work with the Arizona State Museum, I was working with the Lunar and Planetary people on big projects I was working with people in chemistry on much smaller projects people at the medical school on a number of things there was enough sort of leeway in the way we could spend our limited funds that it was a fun puzzle to put together and there were so many people with so many good ideas that it was clear that interdisciplinarity was the key.

You don't fund a mathematician over here and a physicist over here and a chemist over here and expect them to do as much as if you put one pot of funds between them and ask them what they could do together and so I think at the U of A we've just had this really good record of not just interdisciplinary cooperation but real collaboration and it's sort of in the DNA of the place if you look back in the history of the university a lot of the successes are not the lone investigator or experimenter doing his or her thing it's groups of people and in my view those groups of people work best when they're really diverse not a bunch of people who all came through the same program and they all know the same mathematics or whatever but people who can help each other through problems that aren't a problem something that's a problem for you might not be a problem for me and vice versa why not solve each other's problems by collaborating and there was we had funds from ABOR that allowed us to do quite collaborative work in a number of different fields, it was it was a really exciting job to be in and a really exciting time.

In all those years you had the chance to shape a lot of young very bright minds and from all the clues and remarks I found online they loved you, your students absolutely loved you you know a lot of you know very fair very interesting very dedicated, but tough you know you made a connection, a special connection with some of the brightest minds at the U of A, what is it about you that allows you to take this weighty subject matter and just bring it into their lives like it was brought into yours?

Well, thank you I don't think of it this way but what I would say is what I have felt at the U of A is, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to do which means I could be enthusiastic every single day, I was working with students and post-doctoral fellows and faculty on all kinds of projects that interested me but of course you have to be very careful when you have purse strings you don't want to just fund the things that are personally interesting you want to fund the things that you see have the potential for contributing to society in some ways and we have faculty here who are very societally oriented who want to do great things that will help us in various ways and I think that I was I was very often impressed that the program that somebody was bringing to me for funding was almost always all about good outcomes for real people.

It wasn't I'm really good at this and this is what I want to do next so you should fund me it was and if someone had come to me with that sort of attitude, my response would be 'then go find the foundation that wants to fund that,' but people were coming up with ideas that wouldn't garner funding in their initial stages but that brought people together across disciplines and if we talk to people who are not like us we do better our we our ideas improve with criticism and and, and, the, the breadth of impact is multiplied so I think that this is I'm sure not a unique place but I have felt that the University of Arizona is a special place for this not just willingness but wantingness to collaborate with people across campus there are people in this university who could help you with just about any problem you have, any question you have so why not give a little seed funding to let those two people work together and try something out and being in the Vice President for Research Office I had that little bit of seed funding that I could share now and again and, and, it, it really was fun even though some of those little projects of course didn't pan out.

Sure.

That's part of it.

Some won't.

Part of the game.

Some just blossomed and it couldn't have happened in just any university.

You've spent your professional life in the neurosciences and recently you have a very personal story that folds into that you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's tell us about that moment and tell us what that's like now for you.

Well the moment wasn't very pleasant but it I think I knew something was wrong and I know enough about Alzheimer's to have been suspecting that maybe I had Alzheimer's and so I went to have a genetic test and sure enough I have the genes for specific kind of plaque formation in the brain and I wasn't surprised at all no one in my family has had Alzheimer's disease so it's kind of interesting genetically I think being a neuroscientist I just thought okay my brain our brains are all different and my brain right now is going to get a little more different our brains are all different and mine happens to be expressing a gene that causes plaques to form and these plaques do cause problems in the parts of the brain where they reside and so I have some memory problems I'm still me I still feel very much the same person I've always been but I do have to ask my husband is today Saturday or is it Sunday why did I just come to the refrigerator I was coming here for something it's these little things they're not earth shattering issues that I have problems with but many times a day I forget something and I think the the hardest is when I forget something personal about someone I'll find myself talking to someone and then suddenly realizing I had forgotten something important that the person had maybe confided in me about and that's, that's painful but mostly I just tell people if I look blank it's because I'm trying to search for something that'll just take a moment thank you.

That professional understanding of Alzheimer's it sounds like is helping you through this and you have been put on the new medication that also seems to be helping.

Yes I'm on a monoclonal antibody lecanemab that is what it's doing in my bloodstream is pulling out the little the molecules that would make plaques so the idea is just to decrease the number of these molecules that are going to make plaques in my brain and it seems to be working.

Does this diagnosis sort of speed up life I know you have some great travel plans in the fairly near future and you know you're retired and trying to enjoy the best of life now that you can does it does it in some way speed up life but enrich life at the same time that's a good way to put it it speeds up life and it enriches life it speeds up my life in the sense that my husband and I are planning three different trips abroad right now and that's because in the next, in the next year and a half it's the idea for the plan in the next year and a half I don't know how much I'll change I want to be sure that we can do the things we plan to do on these trips abroad and so we are planning them in closer succession than we would have if I hadn't gotten this diagnosis but it's also kind of wonderful these are things we've wanted to do for years and until retirement first you have kids then you have, you know other responsibilities uh with retirement you can do what you want to do and what we've decided is that travel is something we really enjoy we also just enjoy spending time together and so we do more together now than we used to but I don't feel like it's a great rush we're just sort of trying to make the most of whatever time there is but I don't mean to sound maudlin I'm not dying right now I'm living and I just will forget a few of the things I've said to you by the time I get home and you, there are four generations of family now and, and that you want to be closer to and spend more time within retirement that's important to you yeah.

We are very lucky to have our daughter living in Tucson with her husband and our grandchildren and we have a son in Seattle who also is married and has a daughter we'll probably visit them a little more often than we might have before I got this diagnosis but I want to see Emily while she's four and then when she's five and then when she's six so of course we'll visit with them I do feel that I want to put a few things on fast track just to be sure we do them but Paul and I have I think an infinite number of places we'd like to visit on the globe and so we will travel more often as long as we can nice.

Looking back on your life all that you've done all that you've seen and where you are now what would you tell your younger self?

What I would tell my younger self is be bold do what you want to do now.

Do it because there's always going to be something else you want to do tomorrow anyway and I think it's, it's so important to live outside of our jobs and our I don't know sort of the the roles that society sees that we play I think when we can it's great to just take a break from all the things you know you're supposed to do and have fun and that's what I'm planning to do that's not just what I'm planning to do it's what I am doing.

Good, good amen well Dr.

Leslie Tolbert thank you so much for sharing your time sharing your life with us we appreciate it so much and and wish you well going forward happy travels ahead too thank you very much this has been delightful thank you and thank you for joining us I'm Tom McNamara and we'll see you again soon.