Tracey Shors

Title: Professor I
Area: Behavioral Neuroscience
Phone: 732-445-6968
Email: shors@rci.rutgers.edu
Campus: Busch
Building: Psych 201
Website: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~shors/

It was recently "rediscovered" that the brain continues to produce new neurons throughout the lifespan, a process known as neurogenesis. Although thousands are born each day, most die within weeks. Over the past ten years, we have accumulated considerable data indicating that learning keeps the new cells from dying and have some evidence that the new neurons may even be used in processes related to learning. One of my goals over the next few years is to identify what it is about learning that rescues the new cells from death. I plan to do this from a psychological perspective (i.e. identify the learning processes), as well as from a mechanistic level (i.e. identify the neuronal mechanisms). More generally, my goal is to identify the neuronal systems that are used to learn and remember and the means by which memories are used to predict events in the future.

The second focus of my lab relates to sex differences in learning and the different ways that males and females respond to stressful experience. In previous studies, we have found that exposure to an acute but traumatic stressful experience greatly enhances learning in males whereas exposure to the same event severely reduces performance in females. These opposite responses to stress are mediated by differences not only in hormones but also differences in brain substrates and cellular anatomy. Because women are so much more likely than men to be afflicted by depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, I envision these studies as ways to gain a more comprehensive understanding of sex differences in mental illness.

After receiving bachelor degrees in biology and psychology at the University of Alabama, I attended the University of Southern California, where I received a doctorate in Physiological Psychology in 1987. I remained at USC as a postdoctoral fellow in Behavioral Neuroscience, studying neurophysiological mechanisms of plasticity (i.e. long-term potentiation) under Dr. Richard F. Thompson. From there, I went to Princeton University, where I began to study the neurobiology of learning and memory more directly. I have been at Rutgers University since 1997, where I am a full professor with an active laboratory funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.

Degrees:
B.S. Biology University of Alabama
B.S. Psychology University of Alabama
M.A. University of Southern California
Ph.D. University of Southern California