Lico studied under Nobel laureate Bernardo Houssay at the Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental, and defended her doctorate thesis on the action of neurohypophysarian hormones on arterial pressure in the frog.

While endocrinology was the field which gave Bernardo Houssay his Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Lico was more interested in neurophysiology, an area which, at the Instituto, was under the leadership of Miguel Rolando Covian.

[2] In 1970, Lico made a short visit to Yale University, in the laboratory of professor José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado, where she studied the behavior of primates, applying telemetry techniques to infer physiology-behavior relationships.

[2][3] While her PhD research under Houssay focused mainly on neuroendocrinology and cardiac control – her first article was on a method for permanent aortic cannulation in toads[4] – soon she joined Miguel Rolando Covian in the field of neurophysiology.

As recorded by Anette Hoffmann: When I arrived at Ribeirão Preto in 1966, I had the opportunity to begin my scientific education participating in projects developed by Maria C. Lico and Miguel R. Covian.

[7][8] A year before her first findings were presented at the annual congress of the Latin American Association for Physiological Sciences, Reynolds published his paper on the antinociceptive effects of periaqueductal gray electrical stimulation in rats.

[6] After James Reston, while accompanying Richard Nixon in a trip to China, was subjected to post-operative acupuncture at the Anti-Imperialist Hospital in Beijing, Lico got particularly interested in how this technique could induce the activity of endogenous analgesic system.

Later, Lico demonstrated that the perfusate taken from the paw of a rat which was subjected to electroacupuncture could reduce or abolish the cortical evoked potential elicited by a noxious stimulus was applied to the dental pulp.