Tim Gentner
Primary Investigator
Tim Gentner is the PI of the lab. He has been running Gentner Lab since 2006.
in the laboratory
Research in the lab takes an integrative, systems-level approach to understanding the neural mechanisms that govern the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processing of acoustic communication signals and real-world sounds. Our primary focus is on the elaborate vocal communication system of the European starling, a species of songbird.
of Decision Processes
Female mate-choice in songbirds provides an excellent context to study the specific neural mechanisms of decision processes involving natural stimuli. The lab has developed a novel procedure for assaying female song preference that permits extracellular electrophysiology in awake behaving songbirds. We are exploring a number of behavioral manipulations that target more specific acoustic features of male songs which drive female choice
The lab uses a variety of behavioral techniques to examine the statistical organization of spectral and temporal song at multiple acoustic levels. We want to know how such information constrains and biases acoustic pattern perception, attention, and memory mechanisms. These studies are fueled in part by our recent demonstration that songbirds can learn very complex temporal patterns described by grammars thought to be uniquely human.
of Auditory Perception and Cognition
of Auditory Objects
We are studying multiple populations of neurons in the songbird brain, in areas analogous to mammalian auditory cortex, whose responses are directly linked to behaviorally relevant variation among conspecific songs. Current studies in the lab investigate the neural mechanisms that give rise to these representations across the auditory forebrain. We are interested in fundamental questions of stimulus coding and receptive field organization, the transformation of information across brain regions, and the role of network level activity in shaping the brain's responses to natural communication signals. Some of this work is carried out in collaboration with physicists at UCSD and the Salk Institute.
Current lab members
Primary Investigator
Tim Gentner is the PI of the lab. He has been running Gentner Lab since 2006.
Research Scientist
Zeke helps build devices--conceptual, methodological, technological--to deal with how natural vocal behaviors such as birdsong and speech are learned, produced and maintained. His focus is now on a vocal prosthesis that a bird can drive with neuronal activity to produce close-to-natural song.
Grad Student
Michael is a PhD candidate from the Psychology department primarily interested in predictive coding in an auditory context, using trained behavior. Specifically, he is investigating how expectation induced by behavioral training in the European starling affects representation at different levels in the auditory hierarchy.
Grad Student
Kai is a PhD candidate in Bionengineering department, interested in the computational and behavioral characterization of birdsong in production and perception.
Grad Student
Srihita is a Master's student in Bio Engineering studying neural representations of birdsong.
Grad Student
Anna is a PhD student in the Linguistics department studying formal phonology and the neural representation of speech sounds.
Grad Student
Daril is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering studying Brain Machine interfacing.
Grad Student
Trevor is a Neurosciences PhD student interested in how acoustic information combinatorially coded in songbird neuronal population activity, and how internal expectations and external inputs are integrated in the brain to give rise to perception.
Grad Student
Lauren is a PhD student in the Neurosciences Graduate Program and is interested in error processing and sensory-motor feedback.
Grad Student
Emily is a graduate student in the Linguistics Department whose research focuses on the evolutionary and cognitive roots of human language, specifically with regard to syntactic recursion and long-distance dependencies.
Grad Student
Katie is a PhD student in the Psychology department studying the auditory, perceptual, and neural processing of echolocation in bottlenose dolphins.
Grad Student
Xavier is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department with an emphasis in Medical Devices and Systems, studying birdsong vocalizations, neural signals, and behavior.
Grad Student
Jeffrey is a PhD student in the Psychology department studying songbird musicality and aesthetic preferences.
Former lab members
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See a full list of publications on Google Scholar