Megan Peters is associate professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine, a fellow in the Brain, Mind and Consciousness program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Her work uses behavior, advanced neuroimaging techniques and computational modeling to investigate the relationships among perception, metacognition and conscious awareness, with a focus on understanding how our brains build, evaluate and use representations of the world and of ourselves. Prior to joining the University of California, Irvine’s faculty, she was assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside. She received a B.A. in cognitive science from Brown University and previously taught English in Japan before completing her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her science has been continuously funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Young Investigator Award), the National Institutes of Health and private foundations, including the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. She is also known for her role as co-founder and President of Neuromatch, an international nonprofit organization delivering democratized and accessible education in computational neuroscience and related disciplines to about 20,000 students worldwide.
Megan Peters
Associate professor of cognitive sciences
University of California, Irvine
From this contributor
This paper changed my life: ‘Spontaneous cortical activity reveals hallmarks of an optimal internal model of the environment,’ from the Fiser Lab
Fiser’s work taught me how to think about grounding computational models in biologically plausible implementations.
At the credit crossroads: Modern neuroscience needs a cultural shift to adopt new authorship practices
Old heuristics to acknowledge contributors—calling out first and last authors, with everyone else in between—don’t work well for large collaborative and interdisciplinary projects, yet they remain the default.
At the credit crossroads: Modern neuroscience needs a cultural shift to adopt new authorship practices
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Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.
Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.
How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.
How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.
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Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.
Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior
Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.