BHI Launches Women’s Brain Health Initiative: Highlighting Dr. Tracey Shors Trail Blazing Career
Rewiring the Brain to Overcome Everyday Trauma
As Rutgers Brain Health Institute launches its Women’s Brain Health Initiative, we are proud to highlight the work of Distinguished Professor Tracey Shors with a powerful and hopeful message: the female brain is not defined by stress or trauma — it is dynamic, resilient, and capable of remarkable recovery.
For Dr. Shors, the brain is best understood as a dynamic organ that can adapt and change. Fear. Memory. Learning. Resilience. These are verbs, not nouns — constantly shifting brain-based processes that respond to experience, stress, and intentional training.
As a leading researcher in behavioral and systems neuroscience at Rutgers University’s Department of Psychology and Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, Dr. Shors has spent decades illuminating how the female brain responds to stress and trauma — and, crucially, how it can heal and grow stronger. The new Rutgers Women’s Brain Health Initiative begins a year-long program by featuring Dr. Shor’s groundbreaking work.
Guided by Curiosity, Driven to Help Women
“I try to follow my own excitement and answer the questions that keep me up at night,” Dr. Shors says. After years leading a traditional basic science lab focused on stress and learning, she made a deliberate pivot. “I decided I wanted to work directly with women and help them with their everyday traumas. It was a big change, but I am glad I did it.”
That decision led to one of her most impactful creations: MAP Train My Brain™.
Landmark Discoveries
Two of her scientific papers stand out as particularly meaningful to Dr. Shors.
The first is her influential 1999 collaboration with Elizabeth Gould and colleagues, which provided landmark evidence for adult neurogenesis and brain plasticity. In the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, the team showed that many new neurons in the hippocampus die within weeks of being born, but effortful, novel learning keeps many of them alive — offering concrete scientific support for the adage “use it or lose it.”
Gould E, Beylin A, Tanapat P, Reeves A, Shors TJ. Learning enhances adult neurogenesis in the hippocampal formation. Nature Neuroscience. 1999 Mar;2(3):260-5. doi: 10.1038/6365
The second is a more recent paper that reflects her deep interest in women’s mental health and the interconnected nature of psychological symptoms:
Millon EM, Shors TJ. How mental health relates to everyday stress, rumination, trauma and interoception in women living with HIV: A factor analytic study. Learning and Motivation. 2021;73:101680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2020.101680.
Early in her career, after hearing at a scientific meeting that females did not exhibit long-term potentiation (LTP) — a key cellular mechanism of learning — Dr. Shors tested the claim in her own lab. Her team found that females do show LTP. This experience highlighted a larger issue: the widespread underrepresentation of female subjects in neuroscience research. Her subsequent studies helped reveal important sex differences in stress responses and learning, contributing to a national push for greater inclusion of women in studies.
MAP Train My Brain™: Science Meets Real-World Healing
Building on two decades of research into the stress-sensitive hippocampus (a key brain region involved in learning and memory), Dr. Shors developed MAP Train My Brain™ — a free, evidence-based program that combines 30 minutes of silent meditation (mental training) with 30 minutes of aerobic exercise (physical training). Her studies showed that just one hour a week for six weeks produced impressive results:
- Significant reduction in trauma-related rumination
- Up to 40% decrease in symptoms of depression and anxiety
- Increased self-worth, quality of life, and synchronized brain activity
Originally designed for women with histories of sexual trauma, the program has since benefited homeless mothers, women living with HIV, medical students, adults with clinical depression, and K-12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies consistently show that the combination of meditation and exercise produces stronger effects than either activity alone.
Participants frequently describe profound shifts. One woman said she had “never thought about a thought before.” Another shared, “I’m now learning how to put the past in the past.” One of Dr. Shors’ favorites: “MAP Training helps me not to think so much.”
A Liberating Insight
In her 2021 book, Everyday Trauma: Remapping the Brain’s Response to Stress, Anxiety and Painful Memories, Dr. Shors offers a powerful perspective: “The past does not exist.” While the brain replays painful memories like vivid movies, those events are gone. By understanding rumination and training the brain with new mental and physical skills, we can loosen its grip and step into a brighter future.
National Recognition
With nearly 150 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Nature, Science, and Nature Neuroscience, Dr. Shors’ work has earned widespread attention. Her research and book were featured on Good Morning America and in The New York Times. She received the W. Horsley Gantt Medal from the Pavlovian Society for the “noble pursuit of truth” and special recognition from Rutgers for her support of survivors of interpersonal and sexual trauma.
As BHI advances the Women’s Brain Health Initiative, Dr. Tracey Shors’ research offers both scientific foundation and practical hope. The female brain, her work demonstrates, is resilient, adaptable, and responsive to the choices we make today.
