How sensory systems process neural information is the basis of my scientific passion. I am especially interested in how fish use their sensory systems in order to deal with their environment. The fact that sensory systems and therefore signal processing has evolved in water leads to the assumption that the origin of basic signal processing has to be found in aquatic animals. Among the sensory systems present in fish I focus my attention in the way hair cell sensory systems process information.

Fish have implemented hair cells into their sensory repertoire in different ways (e.g. electroreception, lateral line, inner ear, vestibular system). This makes fish extremely well suited to understand and address basic questions of hair cell signal processing.

Currently, as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew H. Bass at Cornell, my goal is to study vocal-auditory integration in the midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus. I use a neurophysiological preparation that uses electrical microstimulation in the midbrain’s periaqueductal gray to evoke a rhythmic motor volley (fictive call) that directly establishes the temporal properties of natural calls. I use sharp electrode recordings coupled wiht neurobiotin injections to investigate the role of a hindbrain prepacemaker nucleus in determining the firing pattern of a hindbrain-spinal, pacemaker-motorneuron circuit.

I am testing the hypotheses that the prepacemaker nucleus establishes the temporal properties of the pacemaker circuit that is translated into different call types, and is the source of a corollary discharge / efference copy to the auditory system.