Rocky Point Scientist Honored by Brookhaven Town

Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Nelly Alia-Klein, a Rocky Point resident, was honored Tuesday at Brookhaven Town’s 25th Annual Women’s Recognition Night at Town Hall.

The honorees are chosen by the town’s Division of Women’s Services. Alia-Klein was chosen for her for her research on biological and genetic components that may lead to violent behavior.

“The clinical term,” she said, "is intermittent explosive disorder.’”

Alia-Klein, who has a background in forensic psychology and as a clinical psychologist, has studied genes, behavioral analysis and neuroimaging to explore their connections to violence.

Her studies of the MAOA (monoamine oxidase A) enzyme, which breaks down neurotransmitters in the brain, has shown that a higher concentration in the brain is linked to depression, while low concentrations are linked to violence.

She said that behavior is a play between biology—genetics—and environment.

“At different times in a person’s lifetime environment and genes play different roles at different weights," she said. “For instance, a woman who smokes when pregnant inhibits MAOA in the baby’s system. So the child is affected by both environment and the mother’s behavior."

As to the possibility that the mother was unfortunately influenced by her own early environment and so on back along the generations, Alia-Klein said there really is no beginning or endpoint to the causes of the behavior.

"It’s as complex as life itself," she said. "I have a poster in my office, a chicken talking to an egg. The chicken is saying, ‘Let’s stop arguing—we’re both here now.’”

As to the oft-touted claim that violent movies and videos breed violence, Alia-Klein related a study in which men who were considered aggressive and those who were not watched violent films. The effects on the men might be the opposite of what might be expected.

“Brain scans showed that those who were aggressive became calmer," she said. "Those who were not aggressive showed physical signs of stress.”

It was as if the aggressive men were relaxed by seeing mirror images of their own behavior.

“Of course,” she said, “It’s a gender issue, too. You give a violent man female hormones, he becomes less violent. There are two types of violence: reactive and evil.”

Alia-Klein, an Israeli, settled in Rocky Point to be near Brookhaven lab. The practical and hoped-for result of this type of research is to be able to ascertain extreme behaviors in individuals before they reach a tragic outcome, such as in the individual who shot Congresswoman Giffords and others at a shopping mall earlier this year.

“We study and have drugs for things like schizophrenia, but this type of violent disorder is both understudied and undertreated,”Alia-Klein said.

The scientist, who was nominated for the Brookhaven Town honor by her colleagues at the lab, is understandably proud to have received recognition for her work. She follows n the footsteps of other women in science at BNL such as chemist Joanna Fowler, who in 2009 received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama.