Elaine Yih-Nien Hsiao is an American biologist who is Professor in Biological Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles.

[citation needed] After graduating she moved to California Institute of Technology, where she focused on neurobiology in the laboratory of Paul Patterson.

These microbes impact the brain by serving as moderators for neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, and are involved with complicated neurological behaviors.

[11] She found that depleting the microbioata of a maternal gut damaged fetal brain development, altering the specific genes which are switched on and how axons between neurons formed.

She showed that there were fewer axons which connect the thalamus to the cortex, and gave rise to sensory impairments.