Tales of Diverse Hearing and Sound Localization Specialty: From Owls to Humans

Processes in our brain govern how we perceive our senses, driving our behavioral interactions and shaping how we make predictions about our surroundings. Across different species, a diversity of brain structures and functions are involved in discerning differences in sensory inputs and influencing behavior. Research shows that our sense of hearing is no exception.

In this lecture, Jose Pena will describe his team’s research into hearing functions across species, including humans and owls. The work indicates that while significant differences exist in neural coding and processing of sound, the basic properties of brain function remain similar from species to species.

Pena is a professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He obtained his MD and Ph.D. from the University of the Republic in Uruguay and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, researching how humans and animals sleep and hear. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Neuroethology and a board member of the ALBA Network. He received the International Society for Neuroethology’s Mosaic Prize in recognition of his contributions and commitment to inclusion and diversity practices in science.