Parenthood and the brain
Childhood fascination led to University career

BY BARBARA FITZGERALD

It’s no surprise that Dr. Craig Kinsley spent a lot of time as a boy contemplating anthills and pondering his dog chasing its tail and growling at the mailman.

“I’ve always been fascinated with nature and living things,” Kinsley says, “and I am to this day. My wife, Nancy, says that I am very easily entertained, but how great is it to be consumed by things that are easily accessible, totally absorbing and free?”

Kinsley has parlayed his lifelong interest into a career, a productive and collaborative approach to research, and considerable national media attention. 

When Kinsley joined the University in 1989, he never anticipated that his research on the behavior of mother rats would lead to coverage on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, interviews on ABC World News Tonight and BBC, mentions on CNN and NBC’s Today, and jokes on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno—not to mention a quarter-million dollar grant last year from the National Science Foundation to fund a suite of microscopy and behavioral neuroscience equipment.

The equipment also will be used by Kinsley’s Richmond colleagues, including Dr. Massimo Bardi and Dr. Cindy Bukach in psychology and Dr. Rafael DeSa, Dr. Gary Radice, Dr. Peter Smallwood and Dr. John Warrick in biology. Also visiting campus for a turn at the controls will be faculty and students from Virginia Union University, the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dickinson College and Randolph-Macon College, where Kinsley’s long-time collaborator, Dr. Kelly Lambert, and her students work with Richmond students on complementary research into mechanisms of the parental brain. The new equipment will add to the existing set of high-end apparatus in Gottwald Center for the Sciences, increasing both the number and quality of studies performed and the number of students who can get involved in hands-on, original research.

“I often think how lucky I was to have chosen Richmond,” says Kinsley. “These have been exciting and wonderful years. With the support of the University and the excellent students and colleagues I’ve had here, we’ve always been able to do things in high-quality fashion.”

Kinsley’s and his students’ research has led them to many opportunities to promote Richmond (“I’m a real cheerleader for the University and our students,” he admits), as well as his own neuroscience interests. He attends numerous neuroscience conferences each year, often accompanied by students, giving papers and participating in panel   discussions.

It was at one of those conferences in 1998 that a Los Angeles Times reporter asked Kinsley questions about his poster, the first demonstration of his research showing actual neural changes in maternal rats that lead them to be smarter, more courageous, resourceful, fearless and coolheaded than female rats without progeny. Kinsley’s belief that the results of that research relate to any number of species, including human beings, led to a front-page article the next morning and, that night, some humor on the subject from Jay Leno.

“I don’t remember the joke exactly,” says Kinsley, but he recalls something like, “Scientists from the University of Richmond have conducted research indicating that pregnancy makes females smarter than males, which could hardly be considered news.  So, when the woman calls her boyfriend to share the news of her pregnancy, he says, ‘Now who is this I’m talking to?’”

Kinsley’s research also has been written about in major scientific publications, such as the prestigious, international science journal Nature and the Science & Technology section of The Economist. Kinsley and Lambert also publish much of their research themselves in neuroscience-related and more general science journals, most recently in a Scientific American article.

“Our research has always been a real team effort involving many terrific students and smart colleagues,” Kinsley says, “and the NSF grant was, likewise, a team effort.  Every year I’ve been here, I’ve had a great group of students, and they are the ones who actually do most of the research. The only difference between students now and in my early days at Richmond is that today’s students are more aware of neuroscience research and the value of it—I no longer have to sell them on doing it. They do much of the work, and I just try to keep things together. That coupled with strong academic and financial support from colleagues and the University has enabled my students to thrive. I am just an average guy who has had extraordinary opportunities available to him.”

As much a “scientist” as Kinsley is, he sees himself as a teacher first. Each year he takes his students on a series of neuroscience “road shows,” traveling the metro-Richmond area to elementary and high schools, providing information about brains and animal behavior, performing demonstrations and playing learning games with, to date, nearly 7,000 K–12 students and their teachers. “The highlight,” says Kinsley, “is always the moment we show them the three human brains we bring along and let the students hold them. They suddenly realize that this is what makes them, ‘them.’”

Kinsley says those experiences are as valuable to his students—more than 500 have participated in the neuroscience road shows through the years—as to the kids they teach. “My students have to know the subject really well in order to teach it to the youngsters,” he says. “It’s a challenge for them to take a complex subject and make it comprehensible to a first grader.  I see again and again just how clever and creative our Richmond students are.”

Currently, he and his students are moving in a new direction, exploring how fatherhood affects the brain.  “It was time to throw a bone to the males,” Kinsley chuckles. Whereas male rat parental behavior is less complex than the females, he was excited to find alterations in proteins in male rats’ brains after exposure to baby rats.

“But the males’ systems are designed differently,” he says.  “And while parenthood is not their primary ‘job,’ it’s been somewhat surprising that they are more than bench warmers in the game of parenting.”

So what’s the biggest surprise in Kinsley’s 17-year tenure at Richmond?

The professor settles back in his office chair, surrounded by stuffed rats of all shapes and sizes, and brains made of plastic, rubber and metal, mostly gifts from his students, and considers the question. “The biggest surprise,” he says, “is that my life is so good.”