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Auditory Perception and Neurophysiology
Perception is
a biological
process. The sensations
and perceptions associated with any sensory system arise through a
series of neurobiological events. The process begins in the periphery
with the transduction of the physical stimulus into neural impulses and
ultimately ends with the recognition of the stimulus by the organism. I
am interested in understanding how the physical features of complex
sounds are encoded or represented in the auditory nervous system and
how these representations are then related to the perceptual attributes
of the sound.
To address
these issues, my research program is directed
along
three lines of investigation.
- Conduct psychophysical experiments in human
listeners
to
define
the perceptual attributes and detection/discrimination thresholds for a
set of complex sounds. How does behavioral performance or perception
change as a specific acoustic feature changes systematically?
- Conduct similar psychophysical experiments
using
operant-conditioning in chinchillas to the same types of sounds. Again,
how does behavioral performance change as a specific acoustic feature
changes systematically? What are the perceptual differences and
similarities between humans and chinchillas?
- Record the activity of single neurons in
the
chinchilla
auditory
system in response to the same types of complex sounds. How do the
neural representations encoded in firing rate and temporal discharge
patterns change as a specific acoustic feature changes systematically?
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