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Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new five-year, $1.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. "Spectro-Temporal Plasticity in Primary Auditory Cortex" is sponsored by NIH's National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. The co-PI is Jonathan Fritz, a post doctoral researcher at ISR.
Auditory experience can cause significant and continuous reorganization and receptive field plasticity in the primary auditory cortex. Auditory cortical cells may undergo rapid, short-term, and context-dependent changes of their receptive field properties when an animal is engaged in different auditory behavioral tasks. This kind of plasticity would likely involve a selective functional reconfiguring of the underlying cortical circuitry to sculpt the most effective receptive field for accomplishing the auditory task. Shamma's research will explore this hypothesis.
March 6, 2004
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