Assistant Professor, Colorado CollegeFernandez-Peters LabDetailsBiography Dr. Fernández-Peters was born in San José, Costa Rica and obtained her BSc in Biology at the University of Costa Rica. As an undergraduate student, she gained research experience in taxonomy of small mammals and field expeditions at the National Museum of Natural History. An interest in animal behavior motivated her to pursue graduate studies in the United States. She completed a MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where she studied chemical and vocal communication of the Neotropical singing mouse. After that, she worked as a coordinator of a REU program for Native American and Pacific Islanders at the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica. She moved back to the US to start a PhD Program in Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. She studied vocal communication in the golden hamster and examined how vocal production is modulated by social context and rapid hormone changes. After finishing, she started postdoctoral training in auditory neurophysiology and communication in mice and bats at Washington State University Vancouver. In 2017, she was hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, she had the opportunity to continue her research training, this time working with songbirds, and steroid neuromodulation of auditory processing. Research Dr. Fernández-Peters’ research focuses on neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying social communication, particularly the production and perception of vocalizations. The sensitivity of the nervous system to auditory social stimuli changes depending on the acute release and action of hormones. Moreover, hormone release can be regulated by motivation, social context and learned experiences. Her primary research focuses on how these factors modulate social communication and auditory learning. She uses a combination of pharmacological, neurophysiological, bioacoustic and behavioral approaches in rodents and more recently, in songbirds. Gregarious songbirds learn to communicate within complex social groups and under high levels of background noise. Their auditory processing of song can be rapidly modulated by steroid signaling and social interactions. In humans, the neural basis of speech perception and attention under challenging acoustic conditions such as background noise is not well understood, and songbirds offer the unique opportunity to explore these questions at physiological and behavioral levels in both males and females.
