Robert M. Sapolsky, PhD
In Conversation with
Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD
COVID AND CHRONIC STRESS
Healthy Coping With Long-Term Pandemic Impacts
Thurs Mar 18, 7:00pm-8:15pm PT
Free for member school parents and for educators from member and non-member schools.
As we mark an unwelcome anniversary, a year of pandemic, we’re asking what will the long-term effects of coping with Covid be? Social isolation, illness, delayed or distanced education and prolonged uncertainty create havoc on the mind and body. Two of the nation’s leading experts on chronic stress and learning and the brain come together to discuss the pandemic’s consequences and how families can mediate them.
Prof. Robert M. Sapolsky, Stanford neuroscientist and the country’s foremost expert on chronic stress, and Dr. Fumiko Hoeft, physician and researcher on learning and the brain, consider the effects of acute and chronic stress of the pandemic and quarantine to help us understand the psychological and health impacts of Covid. Our experts will share the research on brain-body stress response and offer important steps that we can take to limit the adverse consequences of the pandemic and quarantine and boost our own and our children’s resilience to stress.
About Our Speakers
Robert M. Sapolsky, PhD, is a Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museum of Kenya. Professor Sapolsky is a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and his teaching awards include Stanford University's Bing Award for Teaching Excellence. He is the author of several books including, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst; Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers; The Trouble with Testosterone. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Science, Scientific American, Harper's, and The New Yorker. His 2008 National Geographic special on stress, and his on-line lectures about human behavioral biology, have been watched tens of millions of times
Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist, neurophysiologist and cognitive neuroscientist. She is Director of BrainLENS at the University of Connecticut (UConn) and UC San Francisco (UCSF); Professor of Psychological Science, Mathematics, Neuroscience and Psychiatry, and the Director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at UConn; and Adjunct Professor at UCSF. Dr. Hoeft has conducted research on learning and brain development, with focus on literacy and dyslexia, as well as the science of resilience for over 17 years. Her work has been widely covered in media such as The New York Times, NPR, CNN, The New Yorker, and Scientific American. She also serves on many boards at organizations including the International Dyslexia Association, National Center for Learning Disabilities, and the Center for Childhood Creativity.
Line-up Update: Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, is unable to join us as originally scheduled due to the demands of the vaccine roll-out which necessitate a postponement of her appearance.