Vaidehi S. Natu, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist, Stanford University, VPNL
I am a developmental and cognitive neuroscientist. My research program investigates how the human brain matures from infancy to adulthood as it acquires new cognitive skills and behaviors.
Unlike many animal brains, the human brain is remarkably immature at birth; our cognitive and perceptual faculties require a prolonged period to fully develop. My work explores how our genetic blueprint, social and physical environments, and childhood experiences interact to sculpt the neural architecture supporting complex adult behavior. To that end, my research seeks to answer the following overarching questions:
The Nature vs. Nurture Balance: How do innate biological organizing principles and real-world experiences interact to sculpt the brain's functional architecture?
The Building Blocks of Early Development: What are the morphological and microstructural mechanisms (such as tissue growth and white matter myelination) driving functional changes during infancy?
Skill Acquisition in Childhood: How do neural pathways alter as school-aged children master complex visual and cognitive tasks, such as reading and face recognition
Primate Comparisons & Clinical Application: How does human brain development mirror or differ from other primates, and what goes awry in developmental disorders like autism?
To capture the full picture of development, my research combines behavioral experiments and neuroimaging with histology, gene analysis, and comparative primate methods. This multi-modal toolkit allows me to trace the precise links between a brain's physical structure, its neural function, and real-world behavior. Ultimately, this unified approach aims to unlock how complex cognitive skills emerge, creating insights that will transform children's lives.
