How experience builds, tunes, and reshapes cortical circuits across life

How do we become who we are? How is our environment and our sensory & social experience shaping our perception of the world?

We are a multidisciplinary neuroscience lab and study how sensory experience, learning, and aging shape brain circuits. Because hearing is essential for communication, we mostly study the auditory cortex and associated frontal areas. We combine systems neuroscience, circuit analysis, imaging, physiology, and neuroengineering to understand development, plasticity, and hearing-related dysfunction.

Clinical Relevance: Our work helps to understand neurodevelopmental disorders and changes with aging. Our work informs preventative approaches to forestall some of the consequences of aging, e.g. age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) which can contribute to dementia. 

We are in the Biomedical Engineering Department and the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute.

Our work is supported by the NIH (NIDCD , NEI, BRAIN initiative) and  AFOSR. We collaborate with many labs worldwide.

Research images above from our publications.