Research Interests and Publications:

Dr. Fisher’s research focuses on childhood trauma and maltreatment, and foster and adopted children. He is particularly interested in the effects of early stressful experiences on children’s neurobiological and psychological development, and in designing and evaluating prevention and treatment programs for improving abused and neglected children’s functioning in areas such as attachment to caregivers, relationships with peers, and functioning in school. He is also interested in the brain’s plasticity in the context of therapeutic interventions. Particular areas of neurobiological functioning in Dr. Fisher’s research include the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the prefrontal cortex, and neural reward pathways. Dr. Fisher’s laboratory, the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention (SNAP) lab (http://www.uoregon.edu/~snaplab/SNAP), includes graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and other researchers with similar interests. Dr. Fisher is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center (www.oslc.org). He is a Co-Director, with Megan Gunnar of the University of Minnesota, of an NIMH-funded network grant examining the effects of early experiences on glucocorticoid activity in the brain. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1993.

Selected publications

Fisher, P. A., Kim, H. K., & Pears, K. C. (2009). Effects of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care for Preschoolers (MTFC-P) on reducing permanent placement failures among children with placement instability. Child and Youth Services Review, 31, 541-546.

Bruce, J., Fisher, P. A., Pears, K. C., & Levine, S. (2009). Morning cortisol levels in preschool-aged foster children: Differential effects of maltreatment type. Developmental Psychobiology, 51, 14-23.

Bruce, J., McDermott J.M, Fisher P.A, Fox N.A. (2009). Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures to assess the effects of a preventive intervention: a preliminary study with preschool-aged foster children. Prevention Science, 10, 129-140.

Fisher, P. A., & Stoolmiller, M. (2008). Intervention effects on foster parent stress: Associations with child cortisol levels. Development and Psychopathology, 20, 1003-1021.

Fisher, P. A., & Kim, H. K. (2007). Intervention effects on foster preschoolers' attachment-related behaviors from a randomized trial. Prevention Science, 8, 161-170

Fisher, P. A., Stoolmiller, M., Gunnar, M. R., & Burraston, B. (2007). Effects of a therapeutic intervention for foster preschoolers on diurnal cortisol activity. Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Fisher, P. A., Gunnar, M., Dozier, M., Bruce, J., & Pears, K. C. (2006). Effects of a therapeutic intervention for foster children on behavior problems, caregiver attachment, and stress regulatory neural systems. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1094, 215-225.

Gunnar, M. R., Fisher, P. A., & The Early Experience, Stress, and Prevention Science Network. (2006). Bringing basic research on early experience and stress neurobiology to bear on preventive intervention research on neglected and maltreated children. Development and Psychopathology, 18, 651-677.

Fisher, P. A., Burraston, B., & Pears, K. (2005). The Early Intervention Foster Care Program: Permanent placement outcomes from a randomized trial. Child Maltreatment, 10, 61-71.

Pears, K., & Fisher, P. A. (2005). Developmental, cognitive, and neuropsychological functioning in preschool-aged foster children: Associations with prior maltreatment and placement history. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 26, 112-122.