Luciano Sposato
London Health Sciences Centre, London Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, Clinical Neurological Sciences, London, Ontario, Canada
1. What inspired you towards neuroscience?
The brain intrigued me since I was a medical student. With the exception of neurology and cardiology, I actually found medical school quite boring. Because of how medicine was taught in Argentina, I wasn’t able to understand the use of what I was studying. The only topics that were really straightforward to me were those related to the brain.
2. Why stroke?
When I was in my second year of Internal Medicine residency, one of my first teaching assignments was to prepare a stroke lecture for first year residents and students. Since that single day in which I lectured during about 90 very boring minutes, I devoted all my passion to stroke. I will always be grateful to my former Internal Medicine chief resident Dr. Marichu Arriola, who encouraged me do it.
3. What have been the highs so far?
There have been many highs. Perhaps one of the most meaningful ones was moving from Argentina to Canada to practice stroke neurology and to continue pursuing my research career in 2013. Recently, I had the fascinating experience of delivering a Ted Talk about the Heart and Brain Connection in Argentina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1iMoel2LxA). It was a totally different experience, in a stadium with 10.000 attendees and other 40.000 people watching the talk through online live streaming.
4. What have been the lows?
Perhaps the lows are related to the difficulties that researchers face in Argentina and other South American countries because of very limited resources.
5. How do you balance work life with the needs of home life?
I have two young children, Augusto (4 years old) and Emma (2 years old), and a wonderful fully supportive wife, Patricia, who is also a neurologist. I try to be at home with my kids as much as possible and so far I think I have managed to be with them a lot more than I suspected before they were born.
6. Who are your most important mentors and how did you find them?
Real mentorship is a complex matter. My greatest mentor was Prof. Jorge L. Ferreiro in Argentina. He was the Head of Neurology at the Hospital de Clínicas “José de San Martín”, Buenos Aires University, Argentina, where I completed my residencies in Internal Medicine and Neurology. He was the first who believed in my potential as a young physician.
7. What are your most important collaborations and how have you built them?
Within the last few years I have had the chance and pleasure of collaborating with amazing researchers in the field of cerebrovascular disease and epidemiology. I was able to develop and conduct ReNACer, the Argentinean Stroke Registry, and PrEViSTA, a population-based study of stroke incidence, risk factors, recurrence and mortality in Argentina. We invited recognized experts in the field to join the team. I was also very lucky to be able to work with already existing datasets from very important studies, trials, and cohorts. I am very grateful to many top researchers who have kindly allowed me to work with them and shared their data: Peter Rothwell and Sarah Pendlebury (Oxford Vascular Study); Joanna Wardlaw, Peter Sandercock, Richard Lindley, and Martin Dennis (IST-3 Trial); Bud Kukull and John Trojanovsky (National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Centre), Moira Kapral (Registry of the Canadian Stroke Network and the Institute o Clinical Evaluative Sciences), among others. Vladimir Hachinksi was who initiated the collaborations.
