Intended Audience
The neuroscience program welcomes Assistant Professor Nikolas Francis as the second spring speaker in the AY22-23 Neuroscience Seminar Series.
How do we listen to sound? “Hearing” describes how we sense sound, yet it remains unclear how the brain enables listening. Asked another way, which neural mechanisms underlie how we perceive, remember, and attend to sound? By combining neurophysiology, animal behavior, and data analysis, the Francis lab aims to clarify the neural mechanisms of listening and advance our understanding of how brain function relates to behavior. Ongoing research in the Francis lab investigates how neural coding in auditory cortex depends on stimulus complexity, behavioral task structure, and auditory dysfunction in a mouse model of autism.
Dr. Francis is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, jointly in the Biology Department and the Brain and Behavior Institute. His research combines methods in animal behavior, neurophysiology, and data analysis to advance our understanding of how we listen to sound. Dr. Francis received his PhD from MIT in 2011. His thesis work with Prof. John Guinan, Jr., used otoacoustic emissions to study cochlear physiology. His initial post-doctoral fellowship (2011-2014) was done in the UMD Neural Systems Lab, where he was granted an NIH F32 award to study task-related auditory processing using single-unit electrophysiology in the neocortex. He completed his postdoctoral training (2015-2021) in the UMD Kanold Lab, where he was awarded an NIH R21 to study task-related neural coding using 2-photon imaging in auditory cortex.
This lecture counts towards the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC 206 and PSYC493/494.