Dr. Shatz is The Sapp Family Provostial Professor, Professor of Biology and Neurobiology and the Director of Stanford Bio-X.
The major goal of research in the Shatz Laboratory is to discover how brain circuits are tuned up by experience during critical periods of development both before and after birth by elucidating cellular and molecular mechanisms that transform early fetal and neonatal brain circuits into mature connections. To discover mechanistic underpinnings of circuit tuning, her lab has conducted functional screens for genes regulated by neural activity and studied their function for vision, learning and memory. Her research is relevant not only for understanding brain wiring and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia, but also for understanding how the nervous and immune systems interact. |
