Development and plasticity of the auditory system; Developmental hearing loss;
Cortical encoding of auditory perceptual skills.
Professor of Neural Science and Biology
Development and plasticity of the auditory system; Developmental hearing loss;
Cortical encoding of auditory perceptual skills.
Although most synaptic connections within the brain have formed accurately by the time animals begin to hear, their precise number and strength remain malleable. It is this phase of development - the time during which auditory networks are susceptible to the sound environment - that engages our research program. In fact, despite enormous advances in our understanding of the growth and formation of the nervous system, we know little about the function of developing networks or the computations they perform.
Our lab studies the development and function of brain circuits that encode auditory cues, and the emergence of adult perceptual skills. At the cellular level, we explore how early auditory experience influences the development of inhibitory synapses in the central auditory neuraxis and, more recently, in areas downstream from auditory cortex. At the systems level, we ask how auditory experience influences the maturation of auditory perception, and the cortical properties that support these skills. Ultimately, we seek to understand how the development and plasticity of synaptic and membrane properties permit networks to properly encode auditory cues, thereby supporting adult perceptual skills.
Mowery TM, Caras ML, Hassan SI, Wang DJ, Dimidschstein J, Fishell G, Sanes DH (2019) Preserving inhibition during developmental hearing loss rescues auditory learning and perception. J Neurosci [Epub ahead of print]
Caras ML, Sanes DH (2019) Neural variability limits adolescent skill learning. J Neurosci 39:2889-2902. PMCID: PMC6462443
Yao JD, Sanes DH (2018) Developmental deprivation-induced perceptual and cortical processing deficits in awake-behaving animals. eLife 2018; 7:e33891. PMCID: PMC6005681.
Caras ML, Sanes DH (2017) Top-down modulation of sensory cortex gates perceptual learning. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114:9972-9977. PMCID: PMC5604044.
Mowery TM, Penikis KB, Young SK, Ferrer CE, Kotak VC, Sanes DH (2017) Sensory striatum is permanently impaired by developmental deprivation. Cell Reports 19:2462-2468. PMCID: PMC5577933.
von Trapp G, Buran BN, Sen K, Semple MN, Sanes DH (2016) A decline in response variability improves neural signal detection during auditory task performance. J Neurosci 36:11097-11106. PMCID: PMC5098844