Scientific Program
The scientific sessions are arranged around six important topics of auditory cortex research (for details, see below). Some 40 speakers have been invited, and also confirmed their attendance.
Here you will find the conference agenda (schedule, latest update).
For download of the current time table, please click here.
For download of the complete program (PDF 21 MB) including all abstracts (posters, short oral presentations, invited talks), please click here.
Auditory cortex in different species
Studies of the anatomical and functional organization of auditory cortex in different species and its role in communication and behavior help to identify common underlying principles of auditory cortex functioning and to distinguish them from species-specific specializations owing to particular needs and evolutionary traits. In this session, speakers will provide state-of-the-art knowledge and views on the common functional organization, also by means of comparison to other sensory cortices, and on specific adaptations of auditory cortex in different species. Emphasis will be on humans and non-human primates, echo-locating bats, and birds where homologies with mammalian brains have recently been revised. All constitute popular model systems for studies of auditory cortex and its role in hearing, communication, behavior, and learning.
Confirmed speakers:
Georg Klump (Dept. Neuroscience, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany)
Manfred Kössl (Fachbereich Biowissenschaften, Goethe?Universität Frankfurt, Germany)
Christopher Petkov (Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, United Kingdom)
Josef Rauschecker (Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA)
Julie Elie / Frederic Theunissen (Dept. Psychology, University of California Berkeley, USA)
Lutz Wiegrebe (Dept. Biology II, Ludwig?Maximilians?Universität Mu?nchen, Germany)
The hearing-action cycle
When we hear sounds we may decide to orient and act towards the location where they come from. When we move we frequently generate sounds, and we use sounds to guide and control our movements and actions. The interrelationships between sounds and actions have recently come into the interest of researchers of auditory cortex. They complement recent research on the representation of non-auditory aspects of auditory tasks in auditory cortex. They also complement the notion that auditory cortex functions as a "semantic processor" deducing the task-specific meaning of sounds. In this session, speakers will present different views on the involvement of auditory cortex in the hearing-action cycle. Specifically, this will include audio-vocal interactions, the neural basis and speech perception and production, auditory-motor interactions in rhythm production and perception, decision making, and involvement of brain structures different from auditory cortex, such as motor cortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum.
Confirmed speakers:
Edward Chang (Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California San Francisco, USA)
Sonja Kotz (School of Psychological Science, University of Manchester,
UK and Max Planck Institut fu?r Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
Leipzig, Germany)
Hugo Merchant (Dept. Cognitive Neuroscience, Inst. de Neurobiología,
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico)
David Schneider / Richard Mooney (Dept. Neurobiology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, USA)
Erich Schröger (Institut fu?r Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Germany)
Xiaoqin Wang (Dept. Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA)
Anthony Zador (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, USA)
Learning in auditory cortex
Quite generally, neurobiological research on learning has to bridge a categorical gap because learning is a phenomenon defined on the behavioral and psychological level. In auditory cortex research, the identification of potential neural mechanisms underlying specific alterations of behavior or psychophysical performance induced by learning has been particularly successful. In this session, speakers will report and discuss recent findings of physiological mechanisms underlying learning and learning-related phenomena on multiple levels, ranging from cellular physiology, via neural network dynamics and imaging results to behavior and psychophysics. The scope of the session comprises both fundamental research on the neuronal mechanisms sub-serving learning-induced plasticity and their potential clinical implications. A particular emphasis lies on the conceptual exploitation of the complementary results derived from human and animal research in this field.
Confirmed speakers:
Shaowen Bao (Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, USA)
Kasia Bieszczad (Dept. of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California Irvine, USA)
Stephen David (Oregon Hearing Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, USA)
Elia Formisano (Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre and Dept. Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands)
Robert Froemke (Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, USA)
Timothy Gentner (Dept. Psychology, University of California San Diego, USA)
Andrew King (Dept. Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
Frank Ohl (Otto?von?Guericke University Magdeburg, Dept. Systems Physiology of Learning,
Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Germany)
Christo Pantev (Otto?Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, Universität Mu?nster, Germany)
Robert Zatorre (Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Canada)
Auditory cortex: It's about time
Time is most essential for processing of auditory-related information. Neurons in the auditory cortex are sensitive to aspects of sounds on multiple time scales, from a few milliseconds up to several seconds, and in this way possibly encode the complexity of past auditory stimulation. Furthermore, this attribute may also play a crucial role in the prediction of upcoming auditory events. The speakers of this session will address, in presumably controversial fashion, issues derived from studies on humans and animals and related to the representation of time and the relevance of time, like stimulus specific adaptation, novelty and/or change detection, auditory cognition and memory, prediction, streaming, and other temporal mechanisms of information encoding.
Confirmed speakers:
Alexandra Bendixen (Dept. Psychology, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany)
Patrick May (Dept. Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Aalto University Helsinki, Finland)
Israel Nelken (Dept. of Neurobiology and the Edmond and Lily Safra
Center for Brain Sciences, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel)
David Poeppel (Dept. Psychology, New York University, New York, USA)
Christoph Schreiner (Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California San Francisco, USA)
Mitchell Steinschneider (Dept. Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine New York, USA)
István Winkler (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary)
Multisensory interplay in auditory cortex
The problems of how the different senses merge in the brain and of how the brain associates this information with behavioral demands have kept neuroscientists busy already for several decades. Initially, research focused on "classical" multisensory brain structures like the superior colliculus and the parietal cortex; recent research also includes low-level ("unisensory") cortical areas. In this session, authors from various fields of animal and human research will present their scientific results and views on the role of the auditory cortex in multisensory interplay. They will highlight, for example, specific functions of the different auditory fields in multisensory integration processes, comparisons to other sensory, "classical" multisensory and higher-order association areas of the brain, anatomical pathways and mechanisms of multisensory integration at various cellular and areal levels, the role of multisensory information in learning, memory, and behavior, and cross-modal reorganization processes following sensory impairments.
Confirmed speakers:
Pascal Barone (Centre de Recherche and Cognition, Université Toulouse, France)
Eike Budinger (Dept. Systems Physiology and Learning, Leibniz Institut fu?r Neurobiologie Magdeburg, Germany)
Jufang He (Dept. Rehabilitation Sciences, Hong?Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China)
Alex Meredith (Dept. Anatomy and Neurobiology, Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, USA)
Micah Murray (Dept. Clinical Neurosciences and Dept. Radiology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois Lausanne, Switzerland)
Tömme Noesselt (Biologische Psychologie, Otto?von?Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany)
Auditory cortex: Clinical aspects
The Conference on Auditory Cortex so far has focused on basic research of auditory functions with the aim of bridging the gap between animal and human research. This time we would like to make a first step towards bridging another gap, namely between fundamental and clinical research. Therefore, we devoted one conference session to three major clinical topics in auditory research, viz. auditory based language impairment, restoration of hearing by cochlear implants, and tinnitus. The aim of this session is to provide an overview of the achievements in the respective research areas and to define challenging future questions. In addition, we intend to arouse more interest in clinical aspects of auditory functions, both to transfer knowledge from basic research into the clinic and to better understand normal auditory processing.
Confirmed speakers:
Jos Eggermont (Dept. Psychology, University of Calgary, Canada)
Tim Griffiths (Institute of Neuroscience, The Medical School, University Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle, United Kingdom)
Nina Kraus (Dept. Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University Evanston Chicago, USA)
Anu Sharma (Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, USA)