Projects in the pecka lab

How do we hear out individual talkers from a crowd or a car in heavy traffic? A central goal of the lab is to reveal the neuronal coding and circuits underlying selective listening to a specific sound source out of many, as typically performed during auditory scene analysis (ASA). 

Despite decades of research, a functional understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of ASA remains elusive. Most studies had focused on the instant processing of simple sounds in passive settings. During realistic ASA, however, self-motion continuously modulates sensory input. 

Consequently, we are utilizing SIT (Ferreiro, Amaro et al., 2020, see below) in combination with chronic multi-electrode recordings in freely navigating gerbils, to investigate the neural computations of ASA.Based on the recent finding that the task-specific identity of sound-sources alteres the spatial preference of A1 neurons (Amaro et al., 2021), the lab is currently working on several projects: