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titleboxCATHERINE E. CARR titlebox

professor pictureProfessor

email:cecarr at umd.edu
phone:
301.405.2085 (office)
301.405.6915 (lab)
fax:301.314.9358
office:4244 Bio-Psych
graduate programs: Biology, BEES, C-CEBH, MOCB, NACS
bullet visit lab page   bullet most recent publications


RESEARCH INTERESTS

When sound reaches one ear before the other, the brain uses the resulting interaural time differences (ITDs) to localize the sound. The barn owl is a nocturnal hunter and a good model for how we localize sound and process temporal information in general. We have shown that ITDs are translated into location in space in the brainstem. Detection of these time differences depends upon two mechanisms of general significance to neurobiology, delay lines and coincidence detection. Incoming axons form delay lines to create maps of ITD in nucleus laminaris. Their postsynaptic targets act as coincidence detectors and fire maximally when the interaural time difference is equal but opposite to the delay imposed by the afferent axons. Current research is focused on models of delay line-coincidence detector circuit, on the assembly of the map of sound localization during development and on how such circuits evolve. All projects develop from initial behavioral observations into systems, cellular and molecular levels of analysis.

Recent Publications


Macleod KM, Carr CE. 2007 Beyond timing in the auditory brainstem: intensity coding in the avian cochlear nucleus angularis.Prog Brain Res. 165:123-33.

Cheng SM, Carr CE. 2007 Functional delay of myelination of auditory delay lines in the nucleus laminaris of the barn owl. Dev Neurobiol.67(14):1957-74.

Macleod KM, Horiuchi TK, Carr CE. 2007 A role for short-term synaptic facilitation and depression in the processing of intensity information in the auditory brainstem. J Neurophysiol.

Tang YZ, Carr CE. 2007 Development of NMDA Receptor Subunits in Avian Auditory Brainstem. J. Comp Neurol. 502(3):400-13.

Macleod KM, Soares, D, Carr CE. 2006 Interaural timing difference circuits in the auditory brainstem of the emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae). J. Comp Neurol. 495:185-201

Macleod KM, Soares, D, Carr CE. 2005 Interaural timing difference circuits in the auditory brainstem of the emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae). J. Comp Neurol. 495(2):185-201.

Wagner H, Brill S, Kempter R, Carr CE. 2005 Microsecond precision of phase delay in the auditory system of the barn owl. J Neurophysiol. 94:1655-8

Macleod KM, Carr CE. 2005 Synaptic physiology in the cochlear nucleus angularis of the chick. J Neurophysiol. 93(5):2520-9.

Grothe B, CE Carr, J Cassedy, B Fritzsch, C Köppl 2005 Brain pathway evolution and neural processing patterns - parallel evolution? In: Evolution of the Vertebrate Auditory System Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. Ed. Manley, Popper and Fay. Springer, New York

Covey, E. and CE Carr 2005 The Auditory Midbrain in Bats and Birds In: The Inferior Colliculus, Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. ed. C. Schreiner and J. Winer, Spring. New York.