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SENSORINEURAL AND PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES PSYCHOLOGY (SNAPP)

The SNAPP 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 SNAPP 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 SNAPP 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)

Graduate work in SNAPP is mainly an apprenticeship. Students learn the problems and techniques in a specific research area in SNAPP by acting as a co-investigator in the laboratory, under faculty supervision.

Students are expected to present, or to acquire, a background of technical competence in subjects that go well beyond the standard undergraduate major in psychology. Selections from the following categories are considered normal:

1. Mathematics beyond calculus. (For example: Fourier analysis, differential equations, linear algebra.)

2. Statistical models beyond, or different from ANOVA and multivariate methods. (For example: stochastic processes, information theory, probability theory.)

3. Biophysics/Neuroscience. (For example: electrochemistry of neural excitation, biomechanics, neural network theory.)

4. Specific skills necessary to an area of research. (For example: optics/laser technology for a person interested in visual perception; an ability to make acoustical measurements for a person interested in audition; computer programming, electronic circuit engineering, equipment fabrication, single-cell recording, etc.).

Students usually do not begin graduate work fully-prepared in all of these needed areas of competence. Some areas (especially categories 1, 2, and, to a lesser extent, 3 depend on coursework outside the Psychology Department. Others especially 4 are developed through individual study and experience in laboratory work. Note that the psychology graduate courses do not provide a sufficient formal background for a Ph.D. in "SensoriNeural and Perceptual Processes" specialty. This has always been the case. It is the traditional situation at Psychology Departments at other universities, as well, and it is true, generally, for any good program in most areas of Experimental Psychology.

Consequently the requirement for some coursework outside the Department is routine. The requirement is not the same for every student, in terms of field of study or number of courses, but all of our students find it necessary.

To regard this adjunctive coursework as necessary is not to say that the standard repertoire of psychology courses is somehow deficient. Rather, we view our field, and experimental psychology generally, as permanently dependent upon the application of specialized techniques, apparatus, and theoretical models developed originally in other disciplines. We must learn these other disciplines in order to apply them intelligently to our areas of research.

Students applying to the SensoriNeural and Perceptual Processes Program usually are expected to have a demonstrated interest in these adjunctive areas before beginning graduate work in psychology. (This is true at other universities, as well.) Generally, we would not look with favor on an applicant who has not at least begun to explore laboratory science in a serious way, or who has no mathematics beyond calculus. We prefer applicants who have developed as much of the technical background, outlined above, as possible. These fairly stringent standards for admission are necessary and realistic, in our view, because successful work in SNAPP depends on the application of technical skills. This often means that our best applicants come from academic majors outside the "behavioral and social" sciences. What they do not know about the broad range of subdisciplines within psychology can be filled in once they get here.

We agree that all graduate students should be familiar with each of the major subdisciplines of psychology: the Ph.D. should signify, among other things, an ability to teach PSYC 100 with sophistication and insight. How this broad-based exposure is gained is often a matter of individual interests and abilities. One way is to serve as a teaching assistant in courses outside the student's own specialty. Some students can achieve a good command of a different specialty by intensive reading, with or without faculty guidance. Others may need to take formal coursework.

As a general rule, we find that our students also need to study two "non-specialty" topics in some depth: cognitive psychology, and the historical/philosophical foundation of general experimental psychology. Students may begin this study by taking appropriate "core" courses, but we encourage them to do more.

Because each new graduate student begins with a unique set of developed and undeveloped competencies, some flexibility in designing a student's program of study is essential. The SNAPP area faculty has no written standards in this regard. We rely on informal consultation and find that we rarely disagree on the specifics for a given students program for graduate study.

A. Area Core Courses

Core courses for SNAPP students will depend upon the background and interests of the student. Courses will be determined by the student and advisor in consultation with all members of the area. Likely courses include:

B. Departmental Core Courses

The three Core Courses taken outside of SNAPP will depend upon the background and interests of the student. Courses will be determined by the student and advisor in consultation with all members of the area. Likely courses include:

C. Quantitative Requirement

PSYC 601 and 602, or substitutions approved by the Area and the Quantitative faculty. Students admitted to the SNAPP specialty are likely to be exempt from the PSYC 601602 sequence and substitute more advanced courses in quantitative methods.

D. Deadline for Completion of the Doctoral Comprehensive Examination

All phases of the Comprehensive Examination, including oral examination and any reexamination(s) must be completed by the end of the fourth academic year. Failure to meet this deadline normally will result in probation or termination, depending on the circumstances. Extensions will be granted by the Area only in unusual circumstances. The comprehensive exam normally includes presenting a series of lectures on selected topics in the specialty that are observed and evaluated by SNAPP and related faculty members.

E. Requirement to Publish

Students are expected to publish in appropriate refereed journals while participating in the graduate program.

F. Encouragement to Seek Outside Funding

Students will be encouraged to submit applications for an external predoctoral fellowships should their visa status and aptitude scores make applying for a fellowship plausible.

G. Facilities

Several different laboratories support research activities of the faculty and students in the SensoriNeural and Perceptual Processes area. They include:

Maryland Revolving Field Monitor (MRFM) is a unique instrument that makes accurate measurements of eye/head/arm coordination under natural conditions. The MRFM consists of 3 subsystems:

(1) The Revolving Field Monitor/sensor-coil (RFM) measures head and eye rotations. T he RFM produces 3 homogeneous, mutually perpendicular, magnetic fields revolving at different frequencies. Horizontal and vertical eye rotations are measured with silicone annulus-sensory coils attached to each eye by suction. Horizontal, vertical and torisonal head rotations are measured with 2 sensor-coil and the phase of the ac-current induced in a reference coil associated with each field. The precision of angle measurement is better than 1 minarc with linearity better than 0.01% with an effective bandwidth of 244 Hz.

(2) The Sparker Tracking Subsystem (STS) measures 3-D head translations. The "sparker", mounted on top of the head, emits bursts of sound at 61 Hz that are detected by 4 microphones mounted on a rectangular frame near the ceiling. STS computes the time of arrival of each spark's wavefront and outputs distances to each microphone. Its accuracy is about 1 mm with precision of 0.2 mm.

(3) The "Worktable" subsystem consists of a plastic table, with an 11 X 14 grid of equally-spaced wells into which rods topped with color LEDs (targets) can be placed. Outputs of the RFM and the STS are converted into worktable-coordinates to determine where the subject is looking with respect to the targets on the table as they are manipulated.

Neuroscience Research Lab - A large suite of rooms for wet physiology and neuroanatomy are available which makes possible state-of-the-art research in neuroethology and comparative neurobiology. Facilities include small animal surgery, electrophysiology, microscopy, sound analysis, behavioral recording and testing.

H. SNAPP Faculty

Faculty specialized in SensoriNeural and Perceptual Processes include: Steven Brauth, Robert Steinman, and Todd Troyer. John Jeka, an Associate Professor of Kinesiology at UMCP is Affiliated with this specialty area.

Steven E. Brauth (Professor) received his Ph.D. in 1973 from New York University. His interest is in a comparative and evolutionary approach to the study of brain behavior relations, and particularly in animal models of vocal learning including their relation to social communication and function.

Robert M. Steinman (Professor, SNAPP Area Head and Chairman of CNSD) received his Ph.D. in 1964 from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University. He is interested in human oculomotor performance, hand/eye/hand coordination in 3-D space and the role of eye movements in vision and in cognitive processes. His laboratory contains a unique, revolving magnetic field head/eye monitor (the MRFM) that permits accurate measurements of gaze with nearby, as well as distant, objects with the head free from restraint. Dr. Steinman is currently studying the human oculomotor system with a unique revolving magnetic field-sensor coil eye movement monitor, the Maryland Revolving Field Monitor (MRFM). You can see the instrument, visualize the data it generates and read his CV by going to: http://brissweb.umd.edu

Todd Troyer (Assistant Professor) received his Ph.D. in 1993 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is interested in applying computational techniques to understand the neural mechanisms subserving complex temporal behaviors. Specific projects include fine-grained analyses of avian vocalizations recorded from developing birds, and the nature of neural encoding and dynamical processing in models of neurons and neural circuits.

Emeritus Faculty

Willard D. Larkin (Associate Professor Emeritus) received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Illinois. His major research interest had been in mathematical models of sensory-perceptual processes, especially in auditory psychophysics, and in the role of decision processes in perception.

Merrilynn J. Penner (Professor Emerita) received her Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of California - San Diego. Her research interests included spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs; acoustic energies which can be detected when a sensitive miniature microphone is inserted in the ear canal), the connection of SOAEs and tinnitus, temporal processing of auditory stimuli, and mathematical models of the auditory system.

Last modified 22 August, 2007
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