SelectedWorks - Mercedes Fernandez

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Selected Works of Mercedes Fernandez

Associate Professor

Mercedes Fernandez, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at NSU's College of Psychology. Her research focus is in the area of experience-dependent neuroplasticity in humans and involves using electroencephalographic and neuropsychological measures. She is interested broadly on neural inhibitory control in the frontal lobes and on neuropsychological test performance in bilinguals. She measures the brain’s electrical activity to study the link between second language proficiency and neural inhibition. More recently, Dr. Fernandez has been studying neurophysiological changes associated with psychotherapy. Specifically, she and her colleagues are investigating changes in the electroencephalogram after narrative therapy.

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About Mercedes Fernandez

Mercedes Fernandez, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at NSU's College of Psychology. Her research focus is in the area of experience-dependent neuroplasticity in humans and involves using electroencephalographic and neuropsychological measures. She is interested broadly on neural inhibitory control in the frontal lobes and on neuropsychological test performance in bilinguals. She measures the brain’s electrical activity to study the link between second language proficiency and neural inhibition. More recently, Dr. Fernandez has been studying neurophysiological changes associated with psychotherapy. Specifically, she and her colleagues are investigating changes in the electroencephalogram after narrative therapy.

Articles (23)

Journal articles written or co-written by Dr. Mercedes Fernandez

Positive Affective Priming Decreases the Middle Late Positive Potential Response to Negative Images (Lauren D. Hill, Valerie G. Starratt, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) Brain and Behavior (2019)

INTRODUCTION: This study aims to expand on previous literature showing that incidental emotion state priming in a specific domain leads to a higher probability that the primed emotion domain will be activated during a subsequent ...

Neurophysiological Processing of an Emotional Task is Sensitive to Time-of-Day (Issac Chayo, Mercedes Fernandez, Samantha Sandor, et al.) Journal of Circadian Rhythms (2017)

Previous work from our laboratory has shown that a measure of attention to emotionally-charged stimuli, the late positive potential (LPP) event related potential (ERP), distinguished neutral from emotional pictures on a baseline day, but not ...

An Updated Review of Ciguatera Fish Poisoning: Clinical, Epidemiological, Environmental, and Public Health Management (Melissa A, Friedman, Mercedes Fernandez, Lorraine C Backer, et al.) Marine Drugs (2017)

Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP) is the most frequently reported seafood-toxin illness in the world. It causes substantial human health, social, and economic impacts. The illness produces a complex array of gastrointestinal, neurological and neuropsychological, and ...

Object Familiarity and Acculturation do not Explain Performance Differences between Spanish-English Bilinguals and English Monolinguals on the Boston Naming Test (Esther Misdraji-Hammond, Nicholas K. Lim, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (2015)

This study investigates bilingual performance on the English and Spanish Boston Naming Tests (BNTs) while controlling for object familiarity and U.S. acculturation. Previous studies suggest that bilingualism negatively affects naming skill; however, object familiarity, which ...

Acute Stress Dysregulates the LPP ERP Response to Emotional Pictures and Impairs Sustained Attention: Time-Sensitive Effects (Rima A. Alomari, Mercedez Fernandez, Jonathan Banks, et al.) Brain Sciences (2015)

Stress can increase emotional vigilance at the cost of a decrease in attention towards non-emotional stimuli. However, the time-dependent effects of acute stress on emotion processing are uncertain. We tested the effects of acute stress ...

Speaking two languages enhances an auditory but not a visual neural marker of cognitive inhibition (Mercedes Fernandez, Juliana Acosta, Kevin Douglass, et al.) AIMS Neuroscience (2014)

The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend our original findings of enhanced neural inhibitory control in bilinguals. We compared English monolinguals to Spanish/English bilinguals on a non-linguistic, auditory Go/NoGo task while ...

Neurophysiological marker of inhibition distinguishes language groups on a non-linguistic executive function test (Mercedes Fernandez, Jaime L. Tartar, D. Padron, et al.) Brain & Cognition (2013)

Successful interaction with the environment depends on flexible behaviors which require shifting attention, inhibiting primed responses, ignoring distracting information, and withholding motor responses. These abilities, termed executive function (EF), are believed to be mediated by ...

Errors on the WCST correlate with language proficiency in Spanish/English bilingual children (Clemente Vega and Mercedes Fernandez) Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (2010)

This study examined the relationship between the degree of balance in bilinguals (i.e., degree to which an individual shows equivalence in their level of mastery of two languages) and performance on executive function tests. Twenty-four ...

Course of cognitive decline in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation: A within-subjects design (Melissa A. Friedman, Mercedes Fernandez, Jeffrey S. Wefel, et al.) Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (2009)

This study examined the course of clinically significant cognitive change in hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), using a Reliable Change Index (RCI). Neuropsychological evaluations were administered to 117 patients before HSCT. Thirty-three received subsequent evaluations ...

Ciguatera fish poisoning: Treatment, prevention and management. (M.A. Friedman, L. Fleming, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) Marine Drugs (2008)

Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP) is the most frequently reported seafood-toxin illness in the world, and it causes substantial physical and functional impact. It produces a myriad of gastrointestinal, neurologic and/or cardiovascular symptoms which last days ...

Hematological malignancies (M.A. Friedman and Mercedes Fernandez) Meyers:Cognition & Cancer (2008)

Neuropsychological study of ciguatera fish poisoning: A longitudinal case-control study (Melissa A. Friedman, Patricia Arena, Bonnie Levin, et al.) Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (2007)

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the neuropsychological effects of ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP). METHOD: In a longitudinal matched cohort study, 12 CFP cases and 12 matched friend-controls received baseline neuropsychological evaluations within ...

JP-8 jet fuel exposure and divided attention test performance in 1991 gulf war veterans. (I.R. Bell, A.J. Brooks, C.M. Baldwin, et al.) Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine (2005)

INTRODUCTION: Previous research indicates that a large cohort of veterans from the 1991 Gulf War report polysymptomatic conditions. These syndromes often involve neurocognitive complaints, fatigue, and musculoskeletal symptoms, thus overlapping with civilian illnesses from low ...

EEG during lavender and rosemary exposure in infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers. (Mercedes Fernandez, M. Hernandez-Reif, T. Field, et al.) Infant Behavior and Development (2004)

This study investigated whether exposure to lavender or rosemary would change electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and behavior in infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers. Twenty newborns were exposed to a 10% (v/v) concentration of rosemary oil ...

Sucrose attenuates a negative electroencephalographic response to an aversive stimulus for newborns (Mercedes Fernandez, E.M. Blass, M. Hernandez-Reif, et al.) Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics (2003)

Reports that sweet taste calms crying in newborns and is analgesic against the pain caused by a heel lance served as the basis for this study. Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, heart rate activity, and infants' facial ...

EEG asymmetry responses to lavender and rosemary odorants in adults and infants (C. Sanders, M. Diego, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) International Journal of Neuroscience (2002)

Frontal EEG asymmetry shifting from baseline was examined in adults and infants exposed to lavender and rosemary by reanalyzing previously published data, using techniques different from those utilized in the original two studies. Results from ...

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (C.M. Baldwin, L.R. Bell, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) Women and Health, ed (2000)

EEG Sensitization during chemical exposure in women with and without chemical sensitivity of unknown etiology (Mercedes Fernandez, G.E.R. Schwartz and I.R. Bell) Toxicology and Industrial Health (1999)

This study tested the sensitization model proposed by Bell et al. [Bell I.R., Miller C.S. and Schwartz G.E. An olfactory-limbic model of multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome: possible relationship to kindling and affective spectrum disorders. Biol. ...

Neural sensitization model for multiple chemical sensitivity: Overview of theory and empirical evidence (I.R. Bell, C.M. Baldwin, Mercedes Fernandez, et al.) Toxicology and Industrial Health (1999)

This paper summarizes theory and evidence for a neural sensitization model of hyperresponsivity to low-level chemical exposures in multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). MCS is a chronic polysymptomatic condition in which patients report illness from low ...

Subjective ratings of odorants by women with chemical sensitivity (Mercedes Fernandez, G.E.R. Schwartz and I.R. Bell) Toxicology and Industrial Health (1999)

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether women with chemical sensitivity rated the intensity and pleasantness of three odorants [peppermint, vanilla, and propylene glycol (PG)] and odorless room air differently than women ...

P300 and allocation of attention in dual modality tasks (A.J. Nash and Mercedes Fernandez) International Journal of Psychophysiology (1996)

P300 in dual-tasks has been reported to be distributed reciprocally across the tasks, i.e. larger P300 associated with one task implies smaller P300 associated with the other (Wickens et al., 1983; Sirevaag et al., 1989). ...

EEG responses to low-level chemicals in different age groups and cacosmics (G.E. Schwartz, I.R. Bell, Z.V. Dikman, et al.) Toxicology and Industrial Health (1994)

Recent studies from the University of Arizona indicate that normal subjects, both college students and the elderly, can register the presence of low-intensity odors in the electroencephalogram (EEG) in the absence of conscious awareness of ...

Sensitivity to arbitrary object-odor pairings by four-month-old infants (Mercedes Fernandez and L. Bahrick) Infant Behavior and Development (1994)

Single Session Therapy and Neuroscience: Scaffolding and Social Engagement (Karen Young, James Hibel, Jaime L. Tartar, et al.) Collaborative therapy and neurobiology: Evolving practices in action (2017)

Brief narrative practices are becoming one of the most utilized collaborative approaches in walk-in therapy clinics and single session therapy across Ontario, Canada (Duvall & Young, 2015; Duvall, Young, & Kayes-Burden, 2012; Young, 2011b). The ...

Conference presentations, proceedings, lectures, and symposia given by Dr. Mercedes Fernandez

Auditory but not visual ERP distinguish bilinguals from monolinguals on a non-linguistic go/nogo task (Mercedes Fernandez) Society for Psychophysiology Research (2014)