Mona Maron
is a neuroscientist and
the first Arab professor in Israel for neuroscience.
The first Arab faculty member in Israel to be appointed Vice President for Research and Development.
Heads the laboratory for researching the neurobiology of emotions at the University of Haifa
Prof. Mona Maron, you grew up in Isfaya, as a sandwich girl. Precisely from this position, of a local council with relatively lower education rates, and a challenging position in the family unit - you managed to shatter historical glass ceilings in the academy: the first Arab professor in Israel for neuroscience, and recently you were the first Arab woman in Israel to be appointed the vice president for research and development of the University of Haifa. How do you explain the achievements in the shadow of the challenges?
"It's a difficult question. My older sister is a mirror image to my father, while my younger sister is a mirror image to my mother. I came out different, neither here nor there. This is also what gave me freedom of action and thought, because no one expected me to speak. I was always a quiet, hardworking girl, But I was never seen as above average intelligent. In the high school I went to I was not remembered, I was not outstanding, but I had an inner drive.
"My parents didn't finish the fourth grade, but since we were little my father taught us two important values: respect for the family and respect for the book. Every evening my sisters and I gathered after reading a certain passage, and explained to my father its meaning. This was my foundation point for future success in the academy. I was not accepted to study medicine, but fortunately the academy opened its doors to me. I was also very lucky and took advantage of opportunities that arose along the way. That's the truth."
It should be said that your starting point is even more complex because you are a minority within a minority: an Arab, a Christian, a Maronite, and a woman.
"We are about 9,000 Maronites in all of Israel. When I travel abroad and have to explain who I am, people find it difficult to understand.
But it is precisely the small circle in which I am that allows me to move freely.
Precisely because you can hardly see me - I became more flexible, and this flexibility helped me succeed, as I said.
"This flexibility also allowed me to create a bridge, so that others could cross it. I was the first to finish a doctorate in Isfaia, and then I went to do a postdoctorate abroad, contrary to the customs of the society I came from.
So today it can be an ultra-orthodox, Ethiopian or young Arab woman - once I opened the door to success from a situation of no chance of success, many women will be able to do so."
Was it difficult for you to be accepted for a bachelor's degree, and later for a master's degree and a doctorate?
"I came to the University of Haifa from the Arab Orthodox High School in Haifa. I knew all the songs of Bialik, Rachel, Tschernihovsky, but in spoken Hebrew I didn't even know how to say that I wanted half a portion of falafel. I just didn't know how to behave. And unfortunately, the language barrier, which already existed in my time, exists to this day This. The Hebrew language is a critical barrier. Later, in the PhD admissions committee, I was asked: 'Why invest in you - your company will create difficulties and not allow you?'
Be sure that my environment will not allow me to complete a doctorate, certainly a post-doctorate."
its hurt.
"I felt very hurt and I answered them: 'I would not be honored to be associated with a company that will not support me.' Sometimes I am classified as an Arab, sometimes as a Christian, sometimes as a woman. Today I understand that things are in the eye of the beholder. Complexity is my strength."
I guess in some places complexity is not always an advantage.
"In Israel, for example, they look at me as an Arab, with all the stereotypes, as if I have a bomb in my bag and I'm about to explode.
During my life I don't think I've experienced racism, but in Israel they simply turn you into a small person. And it doesn't matter if I was on my way to represent the Israeli academy. My feeling there is that Arabs are perceived as minorities, as terrorists."
Is Isfaya cheering for you today?
"Today yes, and a lot. But until a few years ago they would say to me, 'Tell me, are you still at the university?'
They thought I was still studying, they didn't understand what there was to study for so long. Today when they ask me if I'm still at university, I answer with half a wink: 'Yes, until I find something else to do.' But they are very proud of me, and I am proud to be a native of the place and a daughter the place".
Learn from Lebanon
If we leave Isfayya and Bezhev to the situation of the Arabs in the academy, it seems that there is reason for optimism. In the last decade there has been a 122 percent increase in the number of students from the Arab society. Are you optimistic too?
"When talking about the Arab society in the academy, I am optimistic.
Paraphrasing Netanyahu's words - the Arabs are flocking to the campuses.
This is true not only in Haifa, but also in Bar-Ilan, for example, which used to be mentally blocked from the Arab student and today 19 percent of the students there are Arab.
At the Technion, this figure stands at 23 percent.
The Planning and Budgeting Committee's plan to make higher education accessible to Hebrew society has made a tremendous revolution.
The integration of the Arabs into the academy results in their integration into the market, and this is a key to cultural and intellectual richness."
Despite the flattering data, do you think that higher education is accessible enough for Arab society?
"There is still a lot of work. Most of Arab society is in a low socio-economic situation. Most likely, its people will not think about a doctorate, but about professions that have employment: law, pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy. There are 7,000 unemployed teachers in Arab society, but many will still choose to study teaching because supposedly it is a profession guaranteed for life. We must change this: we want them as engineers, as architects. And yes, also as artists.
"I would like to see more Arabs in the academic staffs as well. Today we are barely two percent. Although we have built a holistic program at the Technical University that encourages students in high school to be admitted to diverse professions and advanced degrees, but it is not enough.
Investing in schools in Arab communities is not similar to investing in Gush Dan, for example.
I believe that something needs to be changed in the foundations of Arab society, and it will take a good few years.
But in the meantime you can see a kernel of change in the engineers from Nazareth, for example, who work at Apple, Google and various hospitals.
This is a start.
In the end, my dream is that there will be technology incubators here - that young Arabs from Nazareth will work in Herzliya, and young people from Tel Aviv will come to Nazareth."
You mentioned earlier the language barrier you had at the time. How do you deal with it?
"The big challenge is in the Ministry of Education. We accept the young people, say, at the age of 18, but the acquisition of language, skills and literacy begins at a young age. As long as Arabs learn Hebrew as a foreign language - we will not be able to integrate. In Lebanon, a completely destroyed country, the children know Arabic, French and English at the level of a mother tongue. Here they don't know Arabic properly, they don't know Hebrew at all, and the English is also at a low level. So the language barrier among young Arabs is more severe than it was 20 years ago, because today a young Arab is simply not exposed to the Hebrew language. He comes to campus and doesn't knows how to formulate even one sentence. That's why his chances of dropping out are high, and the Ministry of Education is responsible for that."
In your examples you spoke in the male voice, but only a small percentage of your boys choose studies.
"This is a big problem. Among the Bedouins in the south, about 80 percent of those who choose to study are girls. Boys drop out as early as middle school. We see evidence of this in the Western world, but not in the extreme classes of Arab society. It is a challenge to get boys to choose higher education, and not drop out."
The immune mind
Let's talk about your research. During basic laboratory experiments you were able to use an injectable drug to erase a fear memory. The treatment erases a specific memory and prevents the reappearance of the anxiety response. Where did the idea of erasing memories come from?
"I'm afraid of everything, easily stressed, anxious, especially towards my relatives. If one of the family members doesn't answer my WhatsApp within a short time - I get stressed. My reaction threshold is also very low, meaning I'm easily startled by environmental stimuli - noises, for example.
"My doctorate and postdoctoral studies dealt with the hippocampus, which is identified as the memory region of the brain. I didn't accept the convention that memories are always linked to the hippocampus, because I thought the brain was one unit that worked cooperatively. Then I decided to investigate the relationship between the emotional center, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex Who is responsible for planning, organizing, emotional regulation and decision-making abilities.
"If we think for a moment in terms of an animal, when it's scared - it will just run away, and that's normal. When does fear become pathological? When the danger passes and a person, for example, still has a high heart rate and can't get out of his house. That is, there is no danger and the rationale doesn't work. What goes wrong in this case is the interaction between the amygdala and the cortex, which cannot inhibit the emotional response that the amygdala produces. This imbalance is actually my work. The beauty of our drug is that the fear memory is erased. That is, even if there is a trigger that under normal circumstances would recreate the traumatic situation, here the animal simply will not remember Her. The traumatic memory was simply erased."
where is the catch
"So, first of all, this is a drug that is related to the production of cancer cells, so we have to use it very carefully, and also understand how to neutralize the dangerous effect. The second thing is that our experiment was successful in a laboratory animal, in a very specific area of the brain. To do this in humans, more Research and a lot of time."
There are also ethical elements.
Fear and anxiety make us more complex and interesting creatures, more human.
Beyond that, anxiety is also related to creativity, so you may be solving one problem but creating another.
"It is a question of whether it is right to erase a memory of fear, because in the end fear is survival. On the other hand, it may be right to erase a pathology of a memory related to fear - anxiety, if you will - but it is very difficult to do that in advanced science. In basic science we have control About the conditions, we teach an animal something specific, and in life the situations are many times more complex."
How did you react the first time when you saw that the drug helped the lab mouse, who stopped being afraid?
"I couldn't believe it. I said to myself: 'Wow, I got it.' for human use. If we succeed in erasing memories of fear and trauma in humans - humanity will change beyond recognition."
Is there a window of opportunity for injecting the substance after the traumatic event?
"Today we know how to reactivate the traumatic memory, and thus an almost unlimited window of opportunity is created to influence it and erase it. A memory of fear is produced in the brain at once, immediately, and our remedy, theoretically of course, is indeed valid for a wide range: fear of what is caused after a lecture that is not It took place as planned, through separation from a spouse and exam anxiety to cases of violence."
It's interesting, because along with the medicine we talked about, you try to deal with stress and anxiety with much more traditional means.
"In general, I believe that psychological therapy is a great way to treat anxieties and traumas. But if we refer to another field of research, we study stress mechanisms related to high-fat food. We found that such food actually works on the same axis as stress. That is, high-fat food, especially in children , activates the stress systems, including activation of the amygdala and underactivation of the prefrontal cortex.
"In other words: more anxiety, less emotional regulation and less organization and planning abilities. When parents feed their child a hamburger or a spoiled dessert, sometimes just to silence him, they harm social and cognitive learning, even the levels of oxytocin which is responsible, among other things, for pro-social behavior. So Before we work on breakthrough drugs, let's check what we're putting on our plate."
In conclusion, what is your research vision?
"The main vision is to translate from mice to humans the way in which we erase the memory of fear. To erase the pathology. I would also be happy to identify biomarkers that would be able to tell us what the biological-social-cognitive tendency of children is, and accordingly build them an appropriate nutritional menu. In the end In other words, the way we develop as children and young people may accompany us for the rest of our lives. And of course, on the academic side, to maintain the higher education system as an island of sanity that gives Israel a reason to be proud."
For suggestions and comments: Ranp@israelhayom.co.il
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