Integrative Neuroscience
NATURE OF THE PROGRAM
The Integrative Neuroscience Area in the Department of Psychology is part of a large and very active neuroscience community on the University of Maryland College Park Campus. Our faculty are among the 60 members of the Neural and Cognitive Sciences Program (NACS), which is a multi-department, multi-college collaboration. NACS offers courses, sponsors a major seminar series, and fosters interactions among scientists working in many areas of the neural sciences across the campus. Our Integrative Neuroscience faculty and their students have ongoing collaborative projects, with labs in Biology, Electrical Engineering, Animal and Avian Sciences, to name only a few. Graduate students who are studying with Integrative neuroscience faculty have the option of receiving their degree from either the Psychology Department or from the NACS Program. Students who enter our laboratories via the NACS program will have Psychology as their "home department." (see below)
A major strength of our campus is an exceptional concentration of specialists in comparative neuroscience (including neuroethology) and in various aspects of auditory neuroscience. The National Institutes of Health has recognized this strength by funding a training grant in the Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing. The training grant provides support for several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and sponsors an annual conference on audition that has drawn prominent auditory scientists from around the world. The most recent conference brought together the faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows from Georgetown University and UMCP for two days of platform presentations, posters, and informal discussions on auditory neuroscience and the evolution of acoustic communication.
The Integrative Neuroscience Area also is part of the extensive network of neuroscientists in the Baltimore-Washington area. Our faculty and students have active, ongoing research programs with colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, George Mason University, Georgetown University, and James Madison University. An important part of scientific activity is attendance at scientific meetings and conferences where students can present their own research as well as learning about the latest research findings in their own and related fields. We consider it an essential part of graduate-student training to attend national and international meetings. In recent years, students from the Integrative Neuroscience Area have presented their work at major conferences in England, Italy, and Germany, as well as a number of meetings throughout North America.
Neuroscience is truly an international discipline. Thus, the Integrative Neuroscience faculty have strong ties to laboratories in Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Israel, and Italy; we frequently have foreign scientists visiting our laboratories and our own students have the opportunity to travel to foreign laboratories to learn techniques and to work on collaborative projects.
COURSE OF INSTRUCTION
The typical graduate-student program consists of courses in neuroscience, behavior, and statistical design and analysis of experiments. Laboratory work consists of research in the laboratory of the faculty mentor. Our training program operates on a mentorship model in which students work closely with their faculty mentors. Initially on supervised research activities, and gradually shifting to more and more independent activity, culminating in the doctoral dissertation. Integrative Neuroscience Area students follow a course of study jointly determined by them, their respective graduate advisors and committee members, with the approval of the Integrative Neuroscience faculty. Normally these courses will be selected from among the following:
- NACS 641 Introduction to Neuroscience
- NACS 642 Cognitive Neuroscience
- NACS 643 Computational Neuroscience
- NACS 619 Classics in the Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences
- PSYC 605 Sensory and Perceptual Processes
- PSYC 607 Human Learning and Cognitive Psychology
- PSYC 611 Developmental Psychology
- PSYC 762 Comparative Psychology
- PSYC 764 Comparative Neuroanatomy
- PSYC 765 Behavioral Neuropharmacology
- PSYC 798 Topics in Neuroscience
- PSYC 888 Research Integrity and Scientific Ethics
TEACHING OPPORTUNITIES
In addition to research experience, the Integrative Neuroscience program offers numerous opportunities for student to gain experience as classroom teachers. Not only does teaching help students to understand the material of the course better, it provides students with invaluable experience in explaining concepts to an audience. This experience is very useful when a student is called upon to make a professional oral presentation of some kind. Among the teaching opportunities available is the possibility of serving as a teaching assistant in advanced laboratory courses in areas of Integrative Neuroscience. This affords students the opportunity to instruct in laboratories equipped with sophisticated, professional-quality equipment for recording behavioral and neural responses in various animals, mostly invertebrates. Other teaching opportunities can be found in undergraduate courses in Introductory Psychology, the Biological Bases of Behavior, and Physiological Psychology, among others.
INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE FACILITIES
The Integrative Neuroscience Area is housed in the Biology-Psychology building which is well equipped for many aspects of behavioral, biological, and neuroscience research. The facilities available in the building include an electron microscopy lab that houses three transmission electron microscopes and two scanning electron microscopes (and associated preparative equipment), and several rooms devoted to histology. Facilities for a wide range of other techniques are found within the building and are available to students as needed. This includes facilities for neuroanatomy, immunocytochemistry, biochemistry, neurophysiology, light microscopy, psychoacoustics and intracellular recording. Machine and electronic shops, as well as facilities for DNA hybridization and nucleic acid sequencing are available near-by in the Chemistry and Physics buildings.
Library facilities accessible to faculty and students include the UMCP Libraries, National Library of Medicine (20 minute drive) and the National Agriculture Library (15 minute drive). The Biochemistry Library, which houses all the major neuroscience journals, is a three-minute walk from the Psychology Department. Books and journals can be obtained quickly from all other campuses of the University of Maryland System via computer link between all of the libraries.
Computer facilities at UMCP are state-of-the-art. All machines on campus are linked via a fiber-optic network that allows for high-speed transmission of data, files, web searches, etc.. Each department has its own local area network (LAN) that provides easy access to campus mainframes, the LAN's of other departments, and the campus' supercomputing facilities. Mainframes at the Computer Science Center are available for research as well as instructional purposes.
INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE FACULTY
Robert Dooling. Ph.D. St Louis University, 1975. Dr. Dooling's laboratory of Comparative Psychoacoustics involves studies of hearing, vocal communication, and vocal development in birds. He uses primarily psychophysical procedures and other behavioral techniques to understand acoustic communication. Recent work has described vocal development in budgerigars, the sensitivity of the avian auditory system to time and frequency cues, the recovery of hearing following hair cell regeneration in the avian inner ear, the perception of speech sounds by birds, and models of complex sound processing by the avian inner ear.
Recent Publications:
Dooling, R.J., Ryals, B.M., Gleich, O., and Presson, J.C. (1998). The paradox of the Belgian Waterslager canary: Congenital hair cell abnormalities and hearing loss despite postmitotic hair cell replacement. In A.R. Palmer, A. Rees, A.Q. Summerfield, and R. Meddis (Eds.). Psychophysical and Physiological Advances in Hearing: Proceedings of the 11 th International Symposium on Hearing, (pp. 145-152). London: Whurr Publishers.
Manabe, K, Sadr, E.I., and Dooling, R.J. (1998). Control of vocal intensity in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): Differential reinforcement of vocal intensity and the Lombard Effect. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 103, 1190-1198.
Lohr, B., and Dooling, R. J. (1998). Detection of changes in timbre and harmonicity in complex harmonic stimuli by zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) and budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 112, 36-47.
Farabaugh, S.M., Dent, M.L., and Dooling, R.J. (1998). Hearing and vocalizations in native Australian budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 112, 74-81.
Heaton, J.T. Dooling, R.J, and Farabaugh, S.M. (1999). Effect of deafening on the contact call of adult budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105, 2010-2019.
Amagai, S., Dooling, R.J., Shamma, S. and Kidd, T.L. (1999). Discrimination of spectral profiles and ripple noises by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105, 2029-2035.
William Hodos, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1960. Dr. Hodos' laboratory investigates the vision of birds by studying the optics of their eyes, the anatomy and physiology if their retinas and the neurons and pathways of their central visual system. These approaches are combined with psychophysical studies of avian vision to gather a better understanding of how these animals process visual information.
Recent Publications:
Hodos, W. and Campbell, C.B.G. The scala naturae: why there is no theory in comparative psychology. Psychological Review, 1969, 76, 337-350.
Hodos, W. and Karten, H.J. Visual intensity and pattern discrimination deficits after lesions of ectostriatum in pigeons. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1970, 140, 53-68.
Campbell, C.B.G. and Hodos, W. The concept of homology and the evolution of the central nervous system. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 1970, 353-367.
Hodos, W. and Liebowitz, R.W. Near-field visual acuity of pigeons: Effects of scotopic adaptation and wavelength. Vision Research, 1977, 17, 463-467.
Hodos, W., Bessette, B.B., Macko, K.A. and Weiss, S.R.B. Normative data for pigeon vision. Vision Research, 1985, 25, 1525-1527.
Hodos, W. Ghim, M.M., Miller, R.A., Sternheim, C.E., Currie, D.G. Comparative analysis of contrast sensitivity. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, 1997, 38, S49.
Hodos, W. and Butler, A.B. Sensory system evolution in vertebrates. In G. Roth and M.F. Wullimann (Eds) Brain, Evolution and Cognition, Heidelberg: Spektrum. In press.
Butler, A.B. and Hodos, W. Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy: Evolution and Adaptation. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996.
Cynthia Moss, Ph.D. Brown University, 1986. Dr. Moss’s laboratory studies auditory information processing, spatial perception and sensorimotor integration in vertebrates, using the echolocating bat as a model system. The echolocating bat presents an excellent model system for this line of research, because this animal actively probes the environment with the acoustic signals that guide its behavior. Research in the lab utilizes behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational methods.
Recent Publications:
Target flutter rate discrimination by bats using frequency modulated sonar sounds: behavior and signal processing models. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1998, 103: 2167-2176.
Simmons, J.A. Ferragamo, M. and Moss, C.F. Echo-delay resolution in sonar images of the big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 1998, 95: 12647-52.
Valentine, D.E. and Moss, C.F. Sensorimotor integration in bat sonar. In T.H. Kunz and P.A. Racey (Editors) Bats: Phylogeny, Morphology, Echolocation and Conservation Biology, 1998, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1998, 220-230.
Schnitzler, H.-U. and Moss, C.F. Echolocation in bats. In T.H. Kunz and P.A. Racey (Editors) Bats: Phylogeny, Morphology, Echolocation and Conservation Biology, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1998, 181-182.
Moss, C.F. Echolocation. In R. Wilson and F. Keil (Eds.) MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, 1999, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, in press.
Schuller, G. and Moss, C.F. Audiovocal feedback control and acoustically-guided behavior in echolocating bats. In J. Thomas, C.F. Moss and M. Vater (Eds.) Advances in the study of echolocation in bats and dolphins, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, to appear in 2000.
Boughman, J. and Moss, C.F. Vocal learning. In A. Simmons, A. Popper and R. Fay (Eds.) Animal Communication. Springer-Verlag, 2000.
David Yager, Ph.D. Cornell University, 1989. Dr. Yager’s laboratory does research on the evolution of auditory systems. Their experiments use insects as model systems to trigger and guide escape behaviors specifically, how flying insects evade capture by bats.
Recent Publications:
Yager, D. D. (1999) Sensory processes: Hearing. In: The Praying Mantids: Research Perspectives. (Prete, F.R., Wells, H. and Wells, P.H., eds.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Yager, D.D. and Spangler, H.G. (1997) Behavioral response to ultrasound in the tiger beetle, Cicindela marutha Dow combines aerodynamic changes and sound production. Journal of Experimental Biology 200: 649-659.
Yager, D.D. (1996) Serially homologous ears perform frequency range fractionation in the praying mantis, Creobroter (Mantodea, Hymenopodidae). Journal of Comparative Physiology (A). 178: 463-475.
Yager, D.D., May, M.L. and Fenton, M.B. (1990) Ultrasound-triggered, flight-gated evasive maneuvers in the praying mantis, Parasphendale agrionina (Gerst.). I. Free flight. Journal of Experimental Biology 152: 17-39.