Bio
Maira Karan is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Her research focuses on how positive human behaviors, such as empathy and prosociality, develop during the period of adolescence and how the adolescent brain and body mature in concert to support these positive behaviors. She has examined the development of these behaviors using experimental tasks, validated questionnaires, ecological momentary assessments, longitudinal assessments, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Another line of her work examines how sleep affects adolescent health and well-being with a special focus on circadian rhythms. At Stanford, she is working on merging her two lines of research to assess how sleep and circadian timing relate to prosocial behaviors. In addition to conducting research, she has a deep passion for uplifting underrepresented individuals in(to) the fields of psychology and neuroscience.
