Natalie Biderman

Discipline: Neuroscience
Project: The Gut-Brain Connection in Cognitive Aging
Advisor: Anthony Wagner

Natalie is a cognitive neuroscientist studying how memory resilience is shaped across the lifespan. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, advised by Daphna Shohamy, where she investigated how memory guides flexible decision-making in the absence of direct experience. As a New Map of Life fellow at Stanford, Natalie focuses on how gut–brain pathways influence memory in aging and Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of identifying modifiable mechanisms that can support cognitive health in longer lives. To address these questions, she integrates behavioral experiments, neuroimaging, computational modeling, and biomarker analysis with emerging tools from proteomics, microbiome science, and neuromodulation.