This Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Minority Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship supports research and training on the neural mechanisms of hearing. The research is under the sponsorship and mentoring of Dr. Ann Eddins of the University of Buffalo, SUNY. Auditory learning is a dynamic process that can be profoundly influenced by learning and experience. Recent evidence indicates that this adaptability arises from the brain's capacity to adaptively modify its cortical representations of sensory stimuli; however the mechanisms underlying this process, especially as it pertains to complex features of sound, are poorly understood. The present proposal is aimed at using non-invasive measures of neural activity to investigate how learning involving complex spectrotemporal features of sound affects the neural representation of those features, and how those changes influence perceptual sensitivities. Two specific experiments are proposed, in which perceptual and neural sensitivities to complex features of sound will be measured before and after training in both humans (Exp. 1) and rats (Exp.2). Auditory evoked potentials will be used to evaluate neural sensitivities, thus providing a non-invasive electrophysiological technique that can be used in both species. To the extent possible, psychophysical measures and training will also be made comparable for both species. The comparative approach proposed here can facilitate the identification of basic neural mechanisms underlying perceptual and plasticity processes in the mammalian brain. The training activities proposed for this fellowship will enhance the applicant's technical skills by expanding her repertoire of electrophysiological techniques to include non-invasive methods, and by providing training on experiments involving humans as participants. This Fellowship will also train an underrepresented minority scientist in behavioral science.
