Color indicates responses to sequences of musical notes in three cortical brain areas.Multiplexed, micro-ECoG array for rapid, minimally invasive high resolution brain recordings.Tonotopic thalamocortical projection neurons segregated in caudal but not rostral thalamus.Different glutamate transporter Type 1 gene expression patterns in caudal and rostral thalamus.Color indicates cortical tone response and vectors indicate direction of tone response gradient.

Research Overview

Mammals perceive sound's frequency, shape and rhythm and use these cues to react to social communications and other natural sounds. In humans, these capabilities are diminished in a variety of cortical developmental disorders including specific language impairment, dyslexia and autism. In the Read Lab, we examine the neurobiology of sound perception at the single neuron, neural network and behavioral levels. In addition to developing comprehensive theories for how biological systems perceive sounds including social communications, we aim to develop new strategies for speech recognition, prosthetic hearing devices, and diagnostic tools for identifying central auditory processing disorders.