Darcy Brisbane Kelley (born November 29, 1948), is an American neurobiologist and currently a Weintraub and HHMI Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.
Kelley then joined Fernando Nottebohm’s laboratory as an NIH postdoctoral fellow to investigate the neural underpinnings of song in canaries from 1975–1977.
Current research focuses on the genetic basis for species differences in vocal communication[12] (in collaboration with the Bendesky lab) and is supported by a Columbia RISE grant.
Research from the Kelley lab has shown that the vocal motor circuit in the hindbrain is sexually differentiated due to the action of testicular androgens, that these hormones control myogenesis and chondrogenesis in the vocal organ, the larynx, and that the greater sensitivity of females to the dominant frequencies in calls of male conspecifics arises, at least in part, from the action of their own androgens on primary auditory neurons.
[13] Her laboratory and those of former trainees/collaborators developed two ex vivo preparations (brain and larynx) that “sing in the dish”, facilitating cellular and molecular analyses of the origins of sex, species differences in vocal signaling and the ability to study the evolution of sensory and motor circuits that support behaviors that contribute to speciation.