The
University of Maryland, College Park, is one of the premier research centers in the area of auditory neuroscience. The members of the auditory neuroscience group collaborate as part of the
Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH). The breadth of the research opportunities in auditory neuroscience is further extended by our collaborative agreement between on-campus investigators and the intramural faculty of the
National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIDCD intramural investigators are adjunct faculty members in NACS. Students and postdoctoral fellows in the NACS program may elect to work with any of the faculty from C-CEBH and/or NIDCD, and are encouraged to work across laboratories to broaden their training and research experiences.
Experimental approaches for research in auditory neuroscience are very diverse among the investigators in our joint program. These include: behavior, biochemistry, biophysics, brain imaging, cell biology, computational modeling, molecular biology, neurochemistry, neuroethology, neurophysiology, psychophysics, and ultrastructure. Equally diverse are the species used as research models (e.g., birds, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, humans, and other mammals) to enable us to understand the structure, function, and evolution of the auditory system. Consequently, there are growing research collaborations between UMD and NIDCD investigators, and unparalleled opportunities for research training for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Research facilities include anechoic rooms and an IAC sound-proof suite, an electron microscopy facility housing transmission and scanning electron microscopes, as well as a confocal microscope (and associated preparative equipment for all of these techniques), and several rooms devoted to histology. Facilities for a wide range of other techniques are also available to students as needed. These include neuroanatomy, immunocytochemistry, biochemistry, neurophysiology, light microscopy, psychoacoustics, speech perception, behavioral analysis, and intracellular recording. Machine and electronic shops, as well as facilities for DNA hybridization and nucleic acid sequencing.
The research and training interests of the members of the auditory neuroscience group overlap with those of the neuroethology, speech and language, and several other groups within NACS. This further adds to the research opportunities for students.
Students and postdoctoral fellows are often supported by a training grant to C-CEBH from the NIH. In addition, there is other extensive funding obtained by our faculty, and as a result, students working in auditory neuroscience laboratories at College Park or at NIDCD will be supported during their classroom and research studies.
Students interested in studying auditory neuroscience with our group are strongly encouraged to contact individual faculty members at College Park and at NIDCD whose research program interests them (see below). It should be noted that students may elect to work with any of the auditory neuroscience faculty from C-CEBH and/or NIDCD. No matter where the mentor, students receive their doctorates through the NACS program.
Brauth, Steven E.,
Psychology
My research interests include neuroethology and brain evolution focusing on the auditory and motor systems.
Burgess, Shawn, Investigator, NHGRI/NIH,
Dr. Burgess' Laboratory studies developmental processes and their relation to human genetic disease. His group employs a variety of modern molecular biology methods to identify and functionally characterize novel developmental genes involved in organogenesis of the ear and maintenance of stem cell populations.
Carr, Catherine,
Biology
Current research is focused both on models of delay line-coincidence detector circuit, and on the assembly of the map of sound location during development of the barn owl. All projects develop from initial behavioral observations into systems, cellular and molecular levels of analysis.
Chadwick, Richard, Chief, Section on Auditory Mechanics, Laboratory of Cellular Biology,
NIDCD
The aim of the Section on Auditory Mechanics is to improve basic understanding of the auditory periphery through the combined use of mathematical modeling of cochlear macro-, micro-, and nanomechanics together with structural, biophysical, and physiological data.
Dooling, Robert,
Psychology
My areas of research include hearing and vocal communication in birds, and comparative aspects of hearing and animal behavior.
Horiuchi, Timothy,
Dr. Horiuchi's research program is centered on the development of neural models of sensorimotor behavior and their implementation in VLSI for use in robotic demonstration systems. The laboratory is currently focused on bat echolocation and other auditory and visual projects.
Iwasa, Kuni, Chief, Section on Biophysics,
NIDCD
The Section on Biophysics studies biophysical properties of sensory cells in the auditory and vestibular systems.
Moss, Cynthia,
Psychology
Our research program is directed at understanding auditory information processing and sensorimotor integration in vertebrates. In our lab, the echolocating bat serves as a model system for a neuroethologically-based study of hearing and perceptually-guided behavior.
Poeppel, David,
Linguistics,
Biology
The main research interest of the lab is the cortical basis of hearing and speech in humans. Two main questions are addressed. One concerns the specification of functional architecture of the speech perception system. This issue is studied using brain imaging as well as neuropsychological data. The second unifying theme in the lab is to investigate to what extent temporal mechanisms encode or represent
information in the auditory cortex. We use non-invasive
electrophysiological techniques (EEG and MEG) to explore how properties (such as latency variation or oscillatory activity) might provide a useful logistical framework to process or represent auditory patterns. The experiments use stimuli of varying complexity and ecological relevance, ranging from pure tones and FMs to ripples to syllables to
words to connected speech. A third research topic that is extensively studied is lexical access. This topic and its various subtleties are investigated using a combination of behavioral and MEG studies.
Popper, Arthur N., Co-Director, Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing,
Biology
The work in this laboratory is directed at understanding basic structure and function of the auditory system in vertebrates, with particular interest in the ear of fishes and its sensory hair cells. These investigations frequently involve a wide number of teleost species and the use of the comparative approach in order to understand the function of the ear as well as its evolution.
Shamma, Shihab,
Elec. & Computer Eng
Dr. Shamma's research over the last 15 years has dealt with issues in computational neuroscience and the development of microsensor systems for experimental research and neural prostheses.
Simon, Jonathan Z.,
Elec. & Computer Eng
I am active in a number of research areas, all under the general headings of Auditory Neural Computations and Representations,Computational and Theoretical Neuroscience, and Signal Processing in Biological Systems.
My specific research areas are:
Magnetoencephalography (MEG): Experimental Research, Analysis, and Signal Processing of Large Scale Neural Data.
Coincidence Detection and Neural Coding of Temporal Information in Auditory Brainstem: Modeling.
Neural Processing of Spectrotemporal Auditory Information in Mammals: Physiology and Modeling.
Signal Processing and Neural Data.
Yager, David D.,
Psychology
The overarching goal of our laboratory is to find out how insect auditory systems are able to acquire and process acoustic information to yield complex, adaptive behaviors. We are especially interested in the evolution of hearing in insects, and have chosen the very unusual praying mantis ear as a model system.
