Kechen Zhang
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Speech, music and animal calls share a hidden structure: their sound energy is stacked at whole-number multiples of a base pitch, called harmonics. Neurons in the auditory cortex, the brain's main hearing region, respond to these harmonic patterns across several octaves.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
auditory cortex
harmonic sounds
pitch
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Build an automated system that measures harmonic sensitivity of individual neurons across layers of marmoset auditory cortex, using Neuropixels probes (dense multi-electrode arrays) and adaptive online stimulus selection.
- Develop an automated two-photon imaging system to characterize harmonic sensitivity of many auditory cortex neurons tuned across multiple octaves of frequency.
- Create generative circuit models showing how cortical harmonic responses could arise from subcortical inputs that each prefer a single frequency, framed by efficient coding of natural sounds.
- Use model-based stimulus design to find the harmonic sounds that best distinguish competing circuit models, and identify which model fits each recorded neuron.
More about the research
The inputs feeding the cortex, however, usually prefer a single frequency. How the brain combines those simple inputs into a sense of harmonic sound is still unclear. This matters for understanding hearing, vocal communication, and hearing loss.
Why it matters
Harmonics are basic building blocks of speech and music, so knowing how the brain encodes them could improve understanding of hearing and vocal communication. The online stimulus-optimization methods might eventually be adapted into automated, adaptive tests for hearing deficits. The findings could also inform treatments for hearing loss and impairment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hiroyuki Kato
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Neuroscience
Map the fast non-lemniscal auditory pathway from the cochlear nucleus through the thalamus to cortical layer 6 in mice, using anatomical tracing and in vivo single-unit recordings.
Jianhua Cang
University of Virginia, VA·Neuroscience
Confirm that Cbln4-positive neurons in the mouse superficial superior colliculus are inhibitory and direction selective, map their shape and connections, and manipulate them to test whether they adjust motion responses based on surrounding context.
Tirin Moore
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Identify which lateral prefrontal neuron subpopulations control attention by recording with Neuropixels probes in the frontal eye field and area 46 of monkeys and using real-time decoders to trigger stimulus perturbations.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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