Julius Axelrod, the scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1970 for his work in explaining how brain cells communicate with each other, has died. He was 92.

Axelrod died in his sleep Wednesday at his home in Rockville, Md., according to the National Institute of Mental Health, where Axelrod worked for much of his life.

Axelrod shared the Nobel in 1970 with Britain’s Bernard Katz and Sweden’s Ulf von Euler for their work on the way chemicals released by nerve endings in the brain effect human behavior.

For his part, Axelrod explained how neurotransmitters in the brain communicate with nerve cells to regulate a wide range of automatic re-sponses in-cluding digestion, heartbeat and blood flow.

The scientists’ work had huge implications for pharmacology, including clearing the way for the development of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Those drugs now are commonly used to treat depression and have recognizable names including Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac.

“His contribution to the fields of mental health and neuroscience make possible current breakthroughs on mood and anxiety disorders and myriad other areas,” Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said in a statement.

Axelrod lost the use of his left eye, which kept him out of the service during World War II, in the late 1930s when a bottle of ammonia exploded in his face. For the remainder of his life, he would wear a darkened lens in his glasses over his left eye.