Sydney Ashton received her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in 2024. She is currently a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Matthew Roesch's laboratory in the Psychology Department. Sydney's overarching research interests surround the idea that experiences during critical periods of development — in particular juvenile social play behavior — may shape later life cognitive behaviors and the neural circuitry underlying them in a sex-dependent manner. At UMD, Sydney is working on developing new and innovative rodent cognitive tasks that allow researchers to ask questions about how the brain encodes various facets of cognition like frustration and perseverance.