Research Interests & Abilities (Keywords)

• auditory neuroscience
• central auditory system
• neural coding
• auditory perception
• auditory acuity
• temporal resolution
• spatial hearing
• neural representations

Major Research Activities

I have nearly a 25-year history of research in central auditory neuroscience. Most of that work dealt with the way in which the brain 'represents' (i.e., constructs a neurological 'picture' of) auditory stimuli, and it was based on highly quantitative studies in anesthetized animals. That work emphasized the way in which the cortex of the brain extracted information about the acoustic identify of a sound (its frequency composition, loudness, etc.), the soundÍs location (i.e., where the sound source is in relation to the listenerÍs head), and the timing of auditory events (e.g., the precision with which the brain is able to encode when an acoustic event occurred). More recently, we have extended our expertise into human auditory perception. In the last five years, we have made major inroads into the mechanisms mediating auditory temporal acuity (i.e., resolution in time), and into the architecture of the human perceptual mechanisms for sound identification and localization.

Network Research Projects

• Perceptual and Cognitive Correlates of Language Skills across the Age Range  (Project Leader)