José L. Peña, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor, Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience

(neuroscience category)

We investigate how the brain selects relevant features of the environment to encode information efficiently. We study hearing in birds, using their specialized behaviors to elucidate fundamental principles of brain function.

The owl’s brain is a showcase in Systems Neuroscience for allowing the analytical approach to how information is processed and represented in the brain. Owls exhibit a characteristic orienting response towards sound sources. This behavior is highly reproducible, the variables involved in triggering specific responses are well characterized, and the system affords progressively deeper levels of analysis. Whereas spatial selectivity of neurons in the owl’s auditory system is initially broad and ambiguous, sharp space-specificity emerges in high-order neurons. In the midbrain, a map of auditory space is computed based on differences in time and intensity of the acoustic signals that arrive at each ear. These binaural cues are processed in parallel pathways that converge where the map emerges. We have focused on regions of the brain that are crucial for this synthetic process: the neurons where the difference between the arrival times of the sound to each ear is initially detected, and the space-specific neurons that respond to sounds coming from unique directions. We found that well-defined computations, which match predictions made by studies of sound localization in humans, underlie the emergent response properties of these neurons. Thus, the owl’s brain provides a system to test models of psychoacoustics at levels from single cells to networks of neurons. Recently, we have studied why owls make systematic errors when localizing in peripheral space. We could predict these errors from looking at how space is represented in the owl’s brain. In addition, we could show how making errors in the periphery could help to localize in the front. In the future, we plan to study how information flows in the sound localization pathway using in vitro electrophysiology as well as the recording of neural activity in behaving animals.

Selected Publications

Pavao R, Sussman ES, Fischer BJ, Pena JL (2018) Anticipated ITD statistics built-in human sound localization. BioRxiv, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/303347

Cazettes F, Fischer BJ, Beckert MV, Pena JL (2018) Emergence of an adaptive command for orienting behavior in premotor brainstem neurons of barn owls. Journal of Neuroscience, http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2018/07/16/JNEUROSCI.0947-18.2018

Batista G, Johnson JL, Dominguez E, Costa-Mattioli M, Pena JL (2018) Regulation of filial imprinting and structural plasticity by mTORC1 in newborn chickens. Scientific Reports, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26479-1

Beckert MV, Pavao R, Pena JL (2017) Distinct correlation structure supporting a rate-code for sound localization in the owl’s auditory forebrain. eNeuro, https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0144–17.2017.

Batista G, Johnson JL, Dominguez E, Costa-Mattioli M, Peña JL. (2016) Translational control of auditory imprinting and structural plasticity by eIF2α. eLife. Dec 23; 5:e17197.

Fischer BJ, Peña JL (2016) Optimal nonlinear cue integration for sound localization. J Comput Neurosci. 2016 Oct 6.

Cazettes F, Fischer BJ, Peña JL (2016) Cue Reliability Represented in the Shape of Tuning Curves in the Owl’s Sound Localization System. J Neurosci. 2016 Feb 17;36(7):2101–10.

Rich D, Cazettes F, Wang Y, Peña JL, Fischer BJ (2015) Neural representation of probabilities for Bayesian inference. J Comput Neurosci. 38(2):315–23.

Cazettes F, Fischer BJ, Peña JL (2014) Spatial cue reliability drives frequency tuning in the barn Owl’s midbrain. Elife. 3:e04854.

Fontaine B, Köppl C, Peña JL (2015) Reverse correlation analysis of auditory-nerve fiber responses to broadband noise in a bird, the barn owl. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 16(1):101-19.