1998 Special Achievement Award

Dr. John Garcia 

*Dr. Joe Martinez accepted the Special Achievement Award for Dr. Garcia at the 1998 ANDP Fall Meeting.  The following is a copy of his acceptance remarks.

John Garcia is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. He has over 130 publications. He was awarded the Howard Crosby Warren Medal for Outstanding Research in 1978 from the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 1979 the American Psychological Association awarded him the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

I called John a few days before the award ceremony, and I asked him how he was doing and what he wanted me to say to those assembled at the ANDP awards dinner. First he related that his arthritis was painful and that he was getting around on a walker, and he was sorry he could not be in Los Angeles to accept the award. He also wanted me to tell you that he was a farm worker until he was 20 years old, that he worked as a mechanic making 18 wheeler trucks, and that he was a ship fitter. I admitted to John that I didn't know what a ship fitter was, and asked that he explain it to me. He told me that at one point he was working in the Oakland ship yard fitting submarines with mufflers prior to the outbreak of World War II. At this time sailors were scoring in the submarine hull the outline of a muffler pipe to cut into the hull for fitting. John realized that this was a problem of two intersecting circles and solved the problem and drew for them the shape of the hole that had to be cut into the submarine. As the war broke out John joined the Army Air Core (today known as the Air Force) to become a flier. Ironically, John was a decent pilot, but he washed out because of persistent nausea. He spent the war serving his country as an Intelligence Specialist.

Following the war John used the GI bill to attend Santa Rosa Junior College and the University of California at Berkeley where he received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. When John finished school he was 38 years old. His first job was with the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in Oakland where he studied the reaction of the brain to ionizing radiation. He went on to be an Assistant Professor at California State College, a Lecturer in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Professor and Chairman of the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah and finally Professor of Psychology & Psychiatry at UCLA. It is important to note that John only had one bad experience being an administrator.

As we all know, John is best know for the "Garcia Effect," or the study of taste aversion conditioning. I asked John how he got in the field? He told me that he was a brand new graduate student at Cal when Tolman (a legendary psychologist) came up behind John and asked, "What are you interested in?" John said, "I'm not sure maybe social or personality psychology." Tolman nodded his head approvingly and asked John if he would assist him in a course in animal experimental psychology. John protested, "I never had a course in animal experimental psychology, and I don't even know where the animals are kept." Tolman replied, "I'm not sure either. Let's go ask Henry [Gleitman]." John concludes, "This ignorant of my own fettle, I was pushed into the proper niche."

One of John's most interesting papers was entitled "Bright Noisy Water." Rats will readily associate taste, but not visual or auditory cues with nausea. Significantly, and this is still a contemporary memory problem, the taste can be separated from the nausea by hours. Where is the memory of the taste held in the brain? Taste aversion conditioning can be induced even when an animal is unconscious. John's research traced out the basic unconditioned response pathway. Neural information arrives at the nucleus tractus solitarius to combine with information about toxins in blood sensed at the area postrema. This information ascends to the amygdala, which is necessary for taste aversion conditioning to occur, and is influenced by descending information from the gustatory neocortex.

John's work has applied significance in protecting lambs and calves from predation by coyotes and wolves. For example, if sheep meat is laced with LiCl and covered with sheep skin and salted in areas where coyotes hunt, then the coyotes will eat the tainted sheep, become sick, and not wish to eat another sheep for a long time in the future.

It is a personal pleasure to accept this award for John. I spent many afternoons in deep theoretical discussions with him at his home in Westwood. I view him as a mentor and a friend.