The University Lecture on “Strategies of information processing in the auditory system… and how neuroscientists and engineers can support each other” will take place as follows:
Date: 9 Jan 2018 (Tue)
Time: 10:30 – 11:30
Venue: Lecture Hall, G013, N21, University of Macau
The speaker is:
Prof. Achim Klug, Associate Professor, Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
The Lecture is:
Strategies of information processing in the auditory system… and how neuroscientists and engineers can support each other
Abstract:
Our brains continuously receive vast amounts of sensory information from the outside world, and process this information by extracting the biologically relevant pieces, such that we can respond appropriately to the outside world. We are just beginning to understand how this information processing works.
This presentation will discuss how incoming sound information received by our ears is initially represented in the brain as a stream of incoming information, and how this stream is further transformed in a step-by-step process to extract the biologically important aspects. We will discuss different methods to measure the activity of neural circuits and experimentally manipulate them, as well as modeling approaches that can be used reconstruct the processing strategies used by the brain. The resulting knowledge and the models have been implemented in devices as diverse as sonar systems, cell phones, or household robots. Moreover, emerging techniques such as optogenetics offer unique possibilities to control neural processing with engineered devices.
Biography:
Achim Klug received his undergraduate and Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. After completing his postdoctoral training at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon he was a Junior Group leader at the University of Munich in Germany. In 2009 he accepted a faculty position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. His research interests are in the area of auditory neuroscience and more specifically, the sound localization pathway. This neural circuit does not only allow a listener to localize a sound source per se, but also helps us to carry a conversation when distracting background noises are present. Naturally, understanding this circuit is not only interesting to neuroscientists but also has a number of implications for the realm of technology.
For more details, kindly find the event poster, abstract and bio.