Students typically enter the lab
through one the following programs:
- Committee on Neurobiology
- Committee on Computational
Neuroscience - Department of Organismal Biology
and Anatomy - Department of Psychology
Students typically enter the lab
through one the following programs:
In one major research thrust, we are investigating the surprising role of sleep in zebra finch song learning and adult song maintenance. To aid in these studies, we have recently begun to describe EEGs in sleeping birds. The song system exhibits powerful statedependent properties which we study by observing and manipulating the forebrain cholinergic system. Analyzing temporal patterns of spiking activity is particularly difficult in the context of sleep, where there is no clear time referent and patterns are not as invariant as they are during behavior. This has stimulated work on statistical models of spike trains, in collaboration with Zhiyi Chi (Statistics). The work on sleep processes in birdsong has also stimulated a project on human speech perception, in collaboration with Howard Nusbaum (Psychology). We also study song perception, taking advantage of the remarkable song recognition and memorization behaviors of starlings. We also continue to pursue our long-standing interest in information processing during singing, principally using chronic recordings.
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