Lingxiao Shao, a postdoctoral associate in the Alex Kwan Lab, has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award from the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). The award, supported by The Gruber Foundation and established in 2005, recognizes early-career neuroscientists for outstanding research and educational pursuit in an international setting. The award includes a $25,000 prize and travel to the SfN annual meeting, where the award will be presented in November.
SfN’s press release recognizes Shao’s research on how psychoactive compounds such as psilocybin and ketamine remodel brain circuits. It cites her pioneering 2021 study as the first to provide in vivo evidence that a single dose of psilocybin can produce long-lasting structural plasticity in the mouse frontal cortex, increasing spine density by 10% for more than a month. Shao’s subsequent work identified the specific neuron types and serotonin receptors responsible for these enduring effects. Through advanced imaging and electrophysiological techniques, her research has laid the foundation for understanding how psychedelics induce lasting neural changes and may guide the development of new treatments for psychiatric disorders.
“Lingxiao led our lab’s foray into the study of psychedelics and has quickly emerged as a trailblazer in this growing research topic,” said Kwan, professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. “Her landmark study provided the first evidence of long-lasting structural plasticity following a single dose of psilocybin. The findings have been widely recognized as foundational, influencing a wave of research now studying the plasticity potential of psychedelic-inspired therapeutics.”
Shao completed her Ph.D. studying the pathophysiological basis of anxiety disorders at Zhejiang University in China. After joining the Kwan Lab (then at Yale University) in late 2019, she was the first lab member to study psychedelics, forging a new research direction.
