[1][2] She is also a member of the Women's Health Research Institute in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
[3] Woolley studies cellular and molecular neuroscience in relation to the brain and behavior, particularly neuroendocrinology and the plasticity of neural circuits.
[1] She attempts to understand molecular mechanisms of estrogen and its interactions with the structure and function of synapses in the adult brain, and their behavioral consequences.
[5] Her earliest work included a pioneering study demonstrating that estrogen caused structural changes to cells in the rat hippocampus.
Her work has broad significance for drug development and women's health,[7] and for the studies of epilepsy,[8] anxiety[1][9] and depression.
[6] Further work established that the manipulation of female sex hormones affects hippocampal structure in adult rats.
[5] "Catherine is finding the same neuronotrophic activation by steroids whether she uses Golgi staining to count spines or the electron microscope to visualize synapses.
In female rats the drug URB-597 increased the inhibitory effect of the endocannabinoid anandamide, lessening the release of neurotransmitters.