Robert Sapolsky

I first met Robert Sapolsky years ago at a research conference. My first impression was that he was quiet... too quiet. In a crowded hotel lobby with hundreds of scientists busily jabbering about themselves and their research, he seemed almost transparent. He didn't talk much, took up very little personal space and seemed comfortable and content to just be there and listen to what was going on around him. I chalked him up as yet another scientific introvert. Let's face it, the sad but true fact is some of us go into science to avoid the messy and unpredictable reality that is human interaction. 

On the next day of the conference, Dr. Sapolsky gave a talk, and, as introversion and public speaking are usually at opposite ends of the personality spectrum, I arrived expecting a strained half-hour lecture. I was shocked -- it was as if somebody had switched Sapolsky's on me during the night. He appeared to be two feet taller than the day before -- he was engaging, dynamic, extroverted, lighthearted, and passionate about his work. He spoke of the complexities of hippocampal neuronal death with such ease that even the bellboys at the hotel understood. Dr. Sapolsky covers a wide spectrum. 

This is a neuroscientist who runs a lab of about 20 people investigating causes for neuronal cell death in the brain -- in particular, how stress and the related stress hormones affect a neuron's ability to survive after trauma. He is a MacArthur fellow, and a professor of biological sciences and neuroscience at Stanford University, and he has an outstanding reputation as a dynamic teacher and lecturer. In addition, he is also an accomplished writer and communicator of science to non-scientists. His books on the mechanism of neuronal death, stress, and stress related diseases, and the "biology of the human predicament" are witty and informative. 

Dr. Sapolsky can also be found on the grasslands of Kenya, where he has established a field research program observing baboon behavior for over 20 years. His field studies are composed of extensive behavioral observation combined with physiological measurements of stress. In order to obtain these measurements, Dr. Sapolsky is said to be a reputable shot with a blowdart. I'd like to think that it was his training in techniques of silent behavioral observation that I encountered at our first meeting (and I have been harboring secret fantasies of firing blowdarts at scientists during conventions ever since). 

 I recently had a chance to talk with him again.

Could you explain your current research?
There are three broad areas: 

First, we have known for 50 to 60 years that stress can do bad things to blood pressure, sex life, and the immune system. It turns out that stress hormones can also damage the nervous system -- in particular, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, which may have something to do with why some of us go into old age with more intact memories than others. I am trying to understand, on a cellular level, how one class of hormones released during stress can damage neurons, and what that has to do with which of us have lots of brain damage after a stroke or seizure, or who succumbs to Alzheimer's. 

The second area is to take that knowledge and try to figure out ways to actively save the neuron after a stroke or seizure using gene therapy techniques to identify genes that might be protective. We are attempting to deliver genes into neurons around the time of crisis to see if we can actually save a neuron. 

The third area includes the fieldwork I'm doing. I am looking at a population of wild baboons living out in Kenya with a very complex and often very socially stressful world. I am basically asking what does social rank and personality have to do with who gets the stress-related diseases? I am looking at neuronal stress related disease, and not just in the brain, but stress damage in virtually any organ of the body. And I am looking at an overwhelmingly important fact: some of us are a lot more vulnerable to stress related disease than others.