Position Title
Professor
- Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior
Research Interests
My lab investigates how the brain analyzes sounds, how attention influences this process, and how it leads to decisions and actions. We employ a multidisciplinary approach that includes recording the electrical activity of single neurons, behavioral studies, psychology, and quantitative methods. Our research addresses how we distinguish sounds, such as an alarm clock from a barking dog, or an ambulance siren from a car horn, and how we can understand speech in noisy environments like crowded parties. We focus on the role of higher auditory areas in the midbrain, thalamus, and cortex in sound perception and sound-guided behavior. Our recent findings show that these areas, thought to be purely auditory, are also influenced by attention and decision-making, suggesting they play a role in guiding behavior as well as sensing sounds.
Center Affiliations
Graduate Program Affiliations
- 1985 B.S. in Bioengineering, Brown University
- 1991 Ph.D. in Bioengineering, University of California, San Francisco/Berkeley
- Downer, J.D., Niwa, M. and Sutter, M.L. (2017) Hierarchical differences in population coding within auditory cortex. J Neurophysiol 118, p. 717-731.
- Downer, J.D., Rapone, B., Verhein, J., O'Connor, KN, and Sutter, M.L. (2017). Feature-Selective Attention Adaptively Shifts Noise Correlations in Primary Auditory Cortex Journal of Neuroscience 37(21): p. 5378-92.
- Downer, JD, Niwa, M., Sutter, M.L. Task Engagement Selectively Modulates Neural Correlations in Primary Auditory Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 35: 7565-7574, 2015.
- Johnson, J.S., O'Connor, K.N., and Sutter, M.L. Segregating two simultaneous sounds in elevation using temporal envelope: Human psychophysics and a physiological model. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138: 33-43. 2015.
- Niwa, M., O'Connor, K.N., Engall, E., Johnson, J.S., and Sutter, M.L. Hierarchical effects of task engagement on amplitude modulation encoding in auditory cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology 111: 307-327, 2015.