Dr. Vazquez is currently a postdoc in Dr. Freiwald Laboratory at Rockefeller University. She is investigating how functional networks coordinate facial expressions, a motor behavior fundamental for social communication. For this aim, she is using a novel experimental approach that combines fMRI-targeting and massively parallel electrophysiological recordings. She is interested in providing an understanding of the neural correlates of facial expressions and revealing general principles about temporal and spatial dynamics of motor control.
Dr. Vazquez earned a Master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Tübingen in Germany. Her graduate work with Dr. Romo at the UNAM, focused on the contribution of the thalamus to perception, its relationship with the cortex, and whether thalamo-cortical interactions contribute to perception. She showed that thalamic sensory neurons mainly encode the physical features of the stimulus. However, the thalamic stimulus representation differs slightly from the cortical one, suggesting a transformation of the neural code from the thalamus to the cortex. Furthermore, the neural interactions within the thalamo-cortical circuit are context dependent, and contribute differentially to perception.
In 2014, Dr. Vazquez received a Latin-American Pew fellowship to work with Dr. Pesaran at NYU, where she studied how primates generate coordinated eye-arm movements. She showed that in addition to the temporal coupling, the spatial coupling for coordinated movements plays a fundamental role in increasing reach accuracy. She was a recipient of a Charles H. Revson Senior Fellowship in 2016.
