Biopsychology Colloquium: Neural mechanisms for making sense of sound

Rapid and efficient processing of sensory cues is critical for adaptive behavior and cognitive function. In particular, sound processing supports everyday human behaviors such as communicating with others, avoiding oncoming traffic, learning from a scientific talk and enjoying music and dance. Many non-human animals also rely on sound processing for communication, danger avoidance, food-seeking and learning. The neural mechanisms supporting such complex functions must integrate the physical attributes of incoming sounds with behavioral context, sound meaning and previous experience. In this talk I will provide an overview of a few projects in our lab that aim to reveal the neural mechanisms supporting behavior-, time- and learning- dependent sound processing.