Sam Wang

Sam Wang

Neuroscientist, Princeton University

Sam Wang is an associate professor, Department of Molecular Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. 

Wang grew up in California and studied physics at the California Institute of Technology. Seeking his Ph.D. at Stanford University, he switched to neuroscience. He has worked at Duke University as a postdoctoral fellow and aided political leaders as a Congressional Science Fellow. After completing his postdoctoral studies, he spent two years at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where he learned to use pulsed lasers to study brain signaling before coming to Princeton.

Wang, who has published more than 40 articles on the brain in leading scientific journals. His educational reach extends past the laboratory and classroom in his books, popular articles and efforts to convey neuroscience to interested nonscientists.

Studies in neuroscience over the last few decades have confirmed an idea originally suggested by philosophers and psychologists: how much the brain can change in response to our experiences.
Listening to Mozart does not improve your child's cognitive development. Reading Shakespeare will. 
Passive acts, like listening to Mozart, will not make your child smarter. On the other hand, active engagement–learning to play an instrument or processing words–improves mental functioning. For instance, there […]