About

Robert Sapolsky is a professor associated with the fields of Biology, Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery at Stanford University. His research focuses on understanding the biological underpinnings of behavior, stress, and neurological processes. As a prominent figure in his field, he has contributed to the scientific community through his work on neurobiology and the effects of stress on the brain. His expertise and research have significantly advanced knowledge in these areas, making him a key member of the Stanford faculty in the Human Biology program.

Research topics

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Biology
• Medicine
• Genetics
• Endocrinology
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive science
• Evolutionary biology
• Psychotherapist
• Zoology
• History
• Ecology

Selected publications

• In defense of our lives as biological machines

  Teorema · 2025-07-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The preceding pieces thoughtfully argue that we possess free will, both of the type that we would want in the moment, and of the type that has determined the sort of person we turned out to be. Moreover, they argue that this overwhelmingly fits our everyday intuition that we can be free at important moments, and that such moments can reflect our ability to consciously choose to amplify or negate the effects of circumstance upon us. In this piece, I heartily and respectfully disagree with all these points.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making sense of the costs of adversity throughout the lifespan on aging in humans and other animals

  Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2024-02-03 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Scars and PARs in a close relative

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-03-11 · 3 citations

  letterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Life without free will: Does it preclude possibilities?

  Possibility Studies & Society · 2024-09-01 · 15 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this partial precis of my recent book ( Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, 2023), I argue against the existence of free will, based on the clarity with which we are nothing more than the sum of the densely intertwined biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment over which we also had no control. Despite this, the vast majority people, including philosophers and psychologists, believe that free will is compatible with our materialist world. I suggest that this arises from, (a) the intense intuitive feeling of agency experienced when we form an intent and act upon it; (b) the examples of people who effortfully rise above their circumstances (or, conversely, who squander their opportunities) are so powerful and compelling that we decide that tenacity and willpower are not made of biology; (c) misinterpretation of the recent revolutions of chaoticism, emergent complexity, and quantum indeterminacy; and (d) difficulty in reconciling that the future is both deterministic and unpredictable. Finally, I suggest that a rejection of free will, rather than leading to an array of societal and existential ills, would be profoundly liberating.

  PublisherDOI

• 2022 ISPNE Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement award: Stress, from molecules to societies

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023-04-26 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• On free will or the lack thereof

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-12-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this interview, Robert Sapolsky outlines his view on Free Will and related topics. The discussion anticipates his upcoming book Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will. Various topics are covered at the intersection of neuroscience with philosophy, education, and the criminal justice system.

  PublisherDOI

• Glucocorticoids, the evolution of the stress-response, and the primate predicament

  Neurobiology of Stress · 2021 · 112 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Evolutionary biology
  • Biology
  • Ecology

  The adrenocortical stress-response is extraordinarily conserved across mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, suggesting that it has been present during the hundreds of millions of years of vertebrate existence. Given that antiquity, it is relatively recent that primate social complexity has evolved to the point that, uniquely, life can be dominated by chronic psychosocial stress. This paper first reviews adrenocortical evolution during vertebrate history. This produces a consistent theme of there being an evolutionary tradeoff between the protective effects of glucocorticoids during an ongoing physical stressor, versus the adverse long-term consequences of excessive glucocorticoid secretion; how this tradeoff is resolved depends on particular life history strategies of populations, species and vertebrate taxa. This contrasts with adrenocortical evolution in socially complex primates, who mal-adaptively activate the classic vertebrate stress-response during chronic psychosocial stress. This emphasizes the rather unique and ongoing selective forces sculpting the stress-response in primates, including humans.

  PublisherDOI

• The Jaw Epidemic: Recognition, Origins, Cures, and Prevention

  BioScience · 2020 · 39 citations

  • Medicine
  • History
  • Psychiatry

  Contemporary humans are living very different lives from those of their ancestors, and some of the changes have had serious consequences for health. Multiple chronic "diseases of civilization," such as cardiovascular problems, cancers, ADHD, and dementias are prevalent, increasing morbidity rates. Stress, including the disruption of traditional sleep patterns by modern lifestyles, plays a prominent role in the etiology of these diseases, including obstructive sleep apnea. Surprisingly, jaw shrinkage since the agricultural revolution, leading to an epidemic of crooked teeth, a lack of adequate space for the last molars (wisdom teeth), and constricted airways, is a major cause of sleep-related stress. Despite claims that the cause of this jaw epidemic is somehow genetic, the speed with which human jaws have changed, especially in the last few centuries, is much too fast to be evolutionary. Correlation in time and space strongly suggests the symptoms are phenotypic responses to a vast natural experiment-rapid and dramatic modifications of human physical and cultural environments. The agricultural and industrial revolutions have produced smaller jaws and less-toned muscles of the face and oropharynx, which contribute to the serious health problems mentioned above. The mechanism of change, research and clinical trials suggest, lies in orofacial posture, the way people now hold their jaws when not voluntarily moving them in speaking or eating and especially when sleeping. The critical resting oral posture has been disrupted in societies no longer hunting and gathering. Virtually all aspects of how modern people function and rest are radically different from those of our ancestors. We also briefly discuss treatment of jaw symptoms and possible clinical cures for individuals, as well as changes in society that might lead to better care and, ultimately, prevention.

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• Foreword

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020-12-31

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Surrealist painters were fond of an epigram penned by an obscure 19th century French poet."Beauty," they would say, is the "chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella."This was a celebration of the Surrealist's love of random, capricious events; of absurd, dislocating juxtapositions.The book that you are holding generates a different sort of epigram-"intensely interesting," it suggests, can be the outcome of the "chance meeting over a dinner table of an orthodontic scholar and an eminent evolutionist."Human cultural evolution has been one long string of examples of the law of unexpected consequences.We invent agriculture, which leads to food surpluses, which leads to job specialization, and before you know it, we've invented socioeconomic status, the most crushing way of subordinating the low ranking that primates have ever seen.We invent sedentary dwelling and permanent structures, and soon we're dealing with the public health consequences of something no self-respecting primate would ever do-living in high-density populations in close proximity to its feces.We domesticate wolves into being companions, and soon we're dressing up our dogs in Halloween costumes and buying Pet Rocks.The emergence of modern humans has generated some surprising twists and turns.Kahn and Ehrlich explore one of these unexpected consequences of human culture, sitting at the intersection of the expertise of this unlikely pairing of authors.Who would ever have predicted that the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Westernization of nursing patterns would have led to a distinctive orthodontic profile (in both the metaphorical and literal sense of "profile")?And who would have predicted that this orthodontic profile winds up being relevant to an array of aspects

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• Jaw Epidemic: A Reply to Singh

  BioScience · 2020-10-26

  article

  Jaw Epidemic: A Reply to Singh Sandra Kahn, Sandra Kahn Orthodontist, private practice Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Paul Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Marcus Feldman, Marcus Feldman Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California E-mail: mfeldman@stanford.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert Sapolsky, Robert Sapolsky Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Simon Wong Simon Wong Dentist, private practice Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar BioScience, Volume 70, Issue 12, December 2020, Pages 1043–1044, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa128 Published: 05 November 2020

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Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21MH070815

  NIH · $402k · 2006

• NIH Grant R01AG006633

  NIH · $1.4M · 1995

• NIH Grant P01NS037520

  NIH · $22.2M · 2010

• NIH Grant R21MH070903

  NIH · $346k · 2008

• NIH Grant K04AG000563

  NIH · $346k · 1998

Frequent coauthors

• Gary K. Steinberg

  Stanford Medicine

  90 shared

• Heng Zhao

  Capital Medical University

  67 shared

• Midori A. Yenari

  University of California, San Francisco

  66 shared

• Jeanne Altmann

  62 shared

• Dora Y. Ho

  Cancer Institute (WIA)

  56 shared

• Howard Eichenbaum

  37 shared

• W. K. Fentress

  Princeton University

  36 shared

• Roger Pitman

  36 shared

Education

• B.A., Biopsychology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1985

• Ph.D., Neuroscience

  University of California, San Francisco

  1990