Beth Stevens (born 1970) is an associate professor in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.
[1] She has helped to identify the role of microglia and complement proteins in the "pruning" or removal of synaptic cells during brain development, and has also determined that the impaired or abnormal microglial function could be responsible for diseases like autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's.
Stevens and former postdoc Dorothy P. Schafer demonstrated that microglia participate in regulation of neuronal activity by phagocytosing complement-tagged synapses.
[15] As the resident phagocytes of the central nervous system (CNS), microglia survey their local environment, clear cellular debris, and make contact with neurons to aid in synaptic pruning during development and learning.
[20] Her research indicates that neurodegenerative diseases may represent a local reactivation of microglial pruning pathways that are beneficial during development but detrimental in the mature brain.
In October 2015, she gave one of 4 Presidential lectures at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the world's largest gathering of neuroscientists.