EARS: Electronic Auditory Research Seminars
E.A.R.S. is a monthly online seminar series on auditory neuroscience featuring presentations by researchers who share their latest data. The seminar series was founded in 2020 and has since grown to over 1500 subscribers across the globe. Seminars are held monthly on Tuesdays at 1 pm ET. They are free and hosted on Zoom: https://pennmedicine.zoom.us/j/96672201477 (Meeting ID: 96672201477).
For updates about future seminars, please subscribe to our mailing list by emailing: ears2022+subscribe@googlegroups.com or by visiting: https://groups.google.com/g/ears2022.
UPCOMING SEMINARS 2026-2027
September 22, 2026: Barbara Canlon and Melissa Polonenko
October 20, 2026: Caroline Runyan and Laura Hurley
November 3, 2026: Stephen David and Ruth Litovsky
December 15, 2026: Early Career Seminar. Abstracts Due November 6 (details to come).
January 12, 2027: Michael Roberts and Lavinia Sheets
February 16, 2027: Jeff Mellott and Arkarup Banerjee
March 16, 2027: Professional Development Seminar
April 13, 2027: Catherine Weisz and Daniel Polley
May 11, 2027: Early Career Seminar. Abstracts Due April 2 (details to come).
We want your feedback!
We’re collecting feedback in anticipation of 2026-2027 season. Please fill out this survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdHsANju7uDUoNOVT8Qedy9uLirRS1TAU017cdGY0ppUgXaIQ/viewform?usp=dialog
ARCHIVE OF PAST SEMINARS
Please watch our previous seminars by clicking on the dates below:
- Jennifer Bizley (UCL Ear Institute): "Mapping sounds into space"
- Brice Bathellier (Institute de l'Audition, CNRS): "A deep encoder for sensory restoration by neuromimetic cortical stimulation"
- Robert Froemke (New York University): "Neural basis of cochlear implant use in rats"
- Aaron Wong (Erasmus MC): "Towards understanding audio-tactile processing in the inferior colliculus"
▶️ February 2026: Crafting your scientific data into a story
- Michele Insanally (University of Pittsburgh)
- Daniel Polley (Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary)
- Victoria Bajo Lorenzana (University of Oxford): "The Role of the Auditory Cortex in Mediating Neural Plasticity"
- Yves Boubenec (École Normale Supérieure): "Emergence of sensorimotor learning correlates in auditory cortex"
▶️ December 2025: Early Career Seminar
- Rajvi Agravat (University of Texas at Austin): "Auditory Cortex Preferentially Tracks Speech Over Music without Explicit Attention"
- Dana Boebinger (University of Rochester): "Rapid and dynamic construction of acoustically invariant speech representations in the human auditory cortex"
- Jenna Blain (University of Connecticut): "Predicting single-trial responses to natural sounds with intensity-contrast gain control spiking receptive field models"
- Nancy Sotero Silva (Bielefeld University): "Eye movement-related eardrum oscillations (EMREOs) impact on auditory spatial discrimination"
- Julie Arenberg (Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary): "Optimizing cochlear implant stimulation to improve speech in noise perception"
- Mike Burger (Lehigh University): "Modulation at a "too big to fail" synapse: cholinergic function in the Medial Nucleus of the Trapezoid Body"
- Bobby Gibbs (University of Wisconsin-Madison): “Integration of top-down signals in the dorsal cochlear nucleus”
- Timothy Balmer (Arizona State University): "Bottlenecks and Future Directions for Binaural Cue Optimization in Bilateral Cochlear Implants"
- Lina Reiss (Oregon Health & Science University): “Binaural fusion: Perceptual and developmental differences with hearing loss and cochlear implants”
- Kenneth Henry (University of Rochester): “Insight into hearing and hearing loss from an avian vocal communication specialist”
- Maria Chait (University College London): “Inferring Instantaneous Auditory Attention from Ocular Dynamics”
▶️ April 2025: MindCore/EARS Joint Seminar
- Jennifer Groh (Duke University): "Computing the location(s) of sound(s) in the visual scene"
▶️ April 2025: Early Career Seminar
- Rose Ying (University of Maryland): “Neural correlates of perceptual plasticity in the auditory midbrain and thalamus “
- Keith Kaufman (University of Pittsburgh): “Arousal-dependent modulation of distinct excitatory cell-types within the auditory cortex”
- Ola Badarni-Zahalka (Haifa University): "Neural Markers of Automatic and Controlled Attention in Children with Bilateral Cochlear Implants: An ERP Investigation”
- Walker Gauthier (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign): “Disrupted Auditory Feature Encoding in a Rat Model of Fragile X Syndrome”
▶️ March 2025: Sounds from outside of academia
-
Amanda Henton: Chief Scientific Officer at Turner Scientific.
-
Richard "Dick" F. Lyon: Author of book Human and Machine Hearing: Extracting Meaning from Sound and researcher at Google.
-
Michael McKenna: Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Akouos
▶️ February 2025 Passcode: 9o%hJy5!
- Laura Getz (University of San Diego): “Interactions are Essential: Audiovisual Integration and Top-Down Influences on Speech Perception”
- Josh McDermott (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): “Auditory inferences of physical object interactions”
▶️ January 2025 Passcode: ?SG22RmH
- Tania Barkat (Basel University): “Surprise response across development”
- Lauren Kreeger (University of Pennsylvania): "Dynamic Temporal Processing in the Auditory Brainstem"
▶️ December 2024: Early Career Seminar Passcode: sL7e6%1*
- Estelle in 't Zandt (New York University): “An auditory cortex network represents both vocal categories and family dialects”
- Stuart D. Washington (Howard University): “Chiropteran Neuroimaging: Structural and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Pale Spear-Nosed Bat (Phyllostomus discolor)”
- Bao Le (University of Virginia): “The zebra finch cortex reconstructs occluded syllables in conspecific song”
- Demetrios Neophytou (City University of New York): “The asynchronous development of the mouse auditory cortex is driven by hemispheric identity and sex”
- Ilina Bhaya-Grossman (University of California San Francisco): "Relative encoding of speech intensity in the human temporal cortex"
▶️ November 2024 Passcode: s!Mih9v*
- Kasia Bieszczad (Rutgers University): "Experience-dependent molecules in the auditory cortex: Tales from a systems neuroscientist"
- Andrea Hasenstaub (University of California San Francisco): "Dynamics and Plasticity in the Central Auditory System"
▶️ October 2024: Communicating Science to a Wider Audience Passcode: 2Nr*PV.3
- Kirsten Sanford ("Dr. Kiki"): Co-Founder and Executive Vice President at the Association of Science Communicators and host and editor of the This Week in Science radio show/podcast. Dr. Sanford will talk about how to present scientific findings in a podcast.
- Megan Kirchgessner: A postdoc in the lab of Dr. Robert Froemke at the New York University School of Medicine and co-founder of Stories of Women in Neuroscience (Stories of WiN), a website and podcast aimed at promoting and advocating for women in neuroscience. Dr. Kirchgessner will talk about the history of WiN and some of the highlights of the podcast.
- Yasemin Saplakoglu: A science writer for Quanta Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Scientific American, Live Science, Wired, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Science and others. Dr. Saplakoglu will discuss how to present research to broader audience and how to identify the impact of specific scientific findings.
▶️ September 2024 Passcode: 9ug.^Rj^
- Tobias Teichert (University of Pittsburg): "Studying the neural substrate of auditory short-term memory to better understand auditory deficits in schizophrenia."
- Angeles Salles (University of Illinois Chicago): "Social Behavior and Acoustic Communication in Bats"
▶️ May 2024: Early Career Seminar Passcode: oZ+#3$75
- Ansley Kunnath (Vanderbilt University): “Audiovisual training improves speech understanding in adult cochlear implant recipients”
- Ben-Zheng Li (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus): “Investigating the neural mechanisms contributing to sound localization precision”
- Cody Cao (University of Michigan): “Distinct Mechanisms for Onset and Ongoing Visual Timing Information in Auditory Cortex”
- Tomas Suarez Omedas (Carnegie Mellon University): “Auditory cortex constructs noise-invariant representations of sounds in background noise”
▶️ April 2024 Passcode: 5ta=j%&m
- Alfonso Apicella (University of Texas San Antonio): “Cholinergic Modulation of Auditory Circuits”
- Anahita Mehta (University of Michigan): “Investigating the neural correlates of harmonicity in humans”
▶️ March 2024: Neuroscience careers outside of academia Passcode: D^Js7v^f
- Panelists: Mira Puri (Azrieli Foundation), Yoojin Chung (Decibel Therapeutics), Janaki Sheth (ClearView Healthcare Partners), Katherine Gribble (Akouos)
▶️ February 2024 Passcode: !F7sVGZ7
- Laura Gwilliams (Stanford University): “Neural architecture of speech comprehension”
- Chris Rogers (Emory University): “Active auditory processing in mice before and after hearing loss”
▶️ December 2023: Early Career Seminar Passcode: rUG6W5L
- Magdalena Sabat (Ecole Normale Superieure): “Time-limited integration windows constrain and organize hierarchical computation in ferret auditory cortex”
- Samantha Moseley (University of Virginia): “Effects of the Early Acoustical Environment on Learning and the Avian Auditory Pallium”
- Pavo Orepic (University of Geneva): “Neural manifolds carry reactivation of phonetic representations during semantic processing”
- Jenna Devare (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia): “Cerebrospinal fluid delivered cochlear AAV gene therapy enabled by hair-cell-specific payload”
October 2023
- Maria Loconsole (University of Padova): “Tortoises (Testudo hermanni) spontaneously associate visual and acoustic information”
- Julia George (Clemson University): "What the egg hears: how acoustic signals reprogram zebra finch development"
▶️ September 2023: Applying for faculty positions -- a behind the scenes look
- Panelists: Daniel Polley (Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary); Marina Silveira (University of Michigan); Chris Petkov (Newcastle).
- Charles Anderson (West Virginia University): "Cell-type specific enhancement of deviance detection by synaptic zinc in mouse auditory cortex”
- Dayo Adewole (University of Pennsylvania): "Tissue Engineering for Auditory Rehabilitation"
▶️ April 2023: Early Career Seminar
- Adrian Bondy (Princeton University): “Striatal circuits for auditory decisions”
- Audrey Drotos (University of Michigan): “GluN2D-containing NMDA receptors enhance temporal summation in VIP neurons in the inferior colliculus”
- Chenggang Chen (Johns Hopkins University): “Stimulus-Specific Facilitation and Adaptation to Repetitive Stimuli in Auditory Cortex”
- Erika Correll (University of Massachusetts Amherst): “Filtering the Noise: The Inhibitory Contribution of Pedunculotegmental GABAergic Neurons During Sensorimotor Gating”
- Alexander Egea Weiss (The Francis Crick Institute): “Functional specificity of auditory inputs to the visual cortex”
▶️ March 2023: Academic publishing: behind-the-scenes tips for managing peer reviews and data
- Panelists (CLICK name for resources & slides): Catherine Carr (University of Maryland), Dan Sanes (New York University), Stephen David (Oregon Health and Science University)
- Sam Norman-Haignere (University of Rochester): "Neural integration in the human auditory cortex"
- Ross Williamson (University of Pittsburgh): "Brain-wide neural circuits for sensory-guided behavior"
- Qiaojie Xiong (Stony Brook University): "Nigrostriatal dopamine pathway regulates auditory behaviors"
- Emily Dennis (Janelia Research Campus): "How do mice hunt for sounds?"
▶️ December 2022: Early Career Seminar
- Kameron Clayton (Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary): "Pumping the brakes: new approaches to reinvigorating hypoactive inhibitory circuits in auditory cortex"
- Carla Griffiths (University College London): "Neural correlates of perceptual constancy in the auditory cortex an effect of behavioural training"
- Amy LeMessurier (New York University): "Corticofugal contributions to vocalization-guided maternal behavior"
- John Orczyk (University of Pittsburgh): "The lifetime of an activity-silent neural correlate of echoic memory is closer to the behavioral ground truth than the lifetime of an activity-based neural correlate"
- Erica Shook (Columbia University): "Predictive dynamics improve noise robustness in a deep network model of the human auditory system"
▶️ November 2022: Conferencing 101 -- How to Navigate APAN/SFN
- Maria Geffen and Yale Cohen (University of Pennsylvania): Building an Itinerary
- Merri Rosen (Northeast Ohio Medical University): Networking
- David Schneider (New York University): Poster Design
- Karine Fenelon (University of Massachusetts Amherst): "Brainstem mechanisms modulating prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex"
- Malte Wöstmann (Universität zu Lübeck): "Behavioural and electrophysiological signatures of auditory distraction in time and space"
- Lixia Gao (Zhejiang University): “Development of turn-taking during marmoset vocal communication”
- Amanda Lauer (Johns Hopkins University): "Role of the olivocochlear system in hearing across the lifespan"
- Diego Elgueda (University of Chile): "Sound and behavioral meaning encoding in the auditory cortex"
- Narayan Sankaran (University of California San Francisco): "Intracranial recordings reveal the encoding of melody in the human superior temporal gyrus"
▶️ April 2022: Demystifying the BRAIN Initiative® Program: Guidance to Potential NIDCD Applicants
- Organizers: Merav Sabri (NIH), Amy Poremba (NIH); Maria Geffen (University of Pennsylvania); Dan Sanes (New York University)
- Presenters: Andrea Beckel-Mitchener (NIH); Jim Gnadt (NIH); Karen David (NIH); Maria Geffen (University of Pennsylvania), Stephen David (Oregon Health and Science University), Dmitry Rinberg (New York University)
▶️ March 2022: Early Career Seminar
- Kelsey Anbuhl (New York University): "An adolescent sensitive period to transient hearing loss"
- Yaneri A. Ayala (National Autonomous University of Mexico): "Neural activation in the auditory cortices of the nonhuman primate during movement synchronization to auditory metronomes"
- Allen Chen (Stony Brook University): "Nigrostriatal dopamine pathway regulates auditory discrimination behavior"
- Katarina Poole (University College London): "Behavioural and neural measures of regularity detection in ferrets"
- Nathan A. Schneider (University of Pittsburgh): "Extratelencephalic contributions to auditory-guided behavior"
- Ioana Carcea (Rutgers University): "Social transmission of behavioral responses to distress calls"
- Liberty Hamilton (University of Texas at Austin): "A parallel pathway for speech that bypasses primary auditory cortex"
- Kerry Walker (University of Oxford): “Hearing in an acoustically varied world”
- Lizabeth Romanski (University of Rochester): “Investigation of Identity and Expression Processing in Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex”
- Xindong Song (Johns Hopkins University): "Discrete patches of cortical pitch processing in the common marmoset"
- Alejandro Tabas (Technische Universität Dresden): "Prediction error is computed with respect to two concurrent generative models in the human auditory pathway"
- Silvana Valtcheva (NYU School of Medicine): "Neural circuitry for maternal oxytocin release induced by infant vocalizations"
- Hiroyuki Kato (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): "Cortical area-specific roles in spectro-temporal integration"
- Mitchell Sutter (University of California Davis): "Task Dependence of Attentional Modulation of Auditory Cortical Coding"
- Laurel Carney (University of Rochester): "Neural Representations of Stimulus Envelopes: What’s Inside?"
- Aravind Parthasarathy (University of Pittsburgh): "A cross-species approach for studying markers and mechanisms of speech intelligibility"
- David Schneider (New York University): "Motor-related expectation drives predictive processing in mouse auditory cortex"
▶️ May 2021: Early Career Seminar
- Nicholas Audette (New York University): “Movement-based predictions in mouse auditory cortex”
- Jung Ho Hyun (Johns Hopkins University): “Demystifying cognitive flexibility at cellular resolution”
- Leena Ali Ibrahim (Harvard Medical School): “Developmental dynamics of input integration onto L1 cortical interneurons”
- Elena Rotondo (Rutgers University): “Promoting the formation of auditory memories for specific temporal features of sound using epigenetic regulators”
- Aaron Williams (University of Pennsylvania): “Sound improves neural encoding of visual stimulus in mouse V1”
- Justin Yao (New York University): “Auditory evidence accumulation in parietal cortex”
- Livia de Hoz (Charité - Medical University Berlin): "Independent processing of sound features in mice"
- Hysell Oviedo (City University of New York): "Interrogating circuits to decode speech"
▶️ March 2021: Early Career Seminar
- Alice Burghard (University of Connecticut Health Center): "Long-duration sound evoked afterdischarge – just some neurons that have missed their stop cue?"
- Mateo Lopez-Espejo (Oregon Health and Science University): "Temporal integration and contextual discrimination in neuronal populations of the auditory cortex"
- Chase Mackey (Vanderbilt University): "Hierarchical characterization of temporal integration in the subcortical auditory system of rhesus macaques"
- Alice Milne (University College London): "Sustained pupil responses are modulated by predictability of auditory sequences"
- Nihaad Paraouty (New York University): "Social learning enhances stimulus representations in the auditory cortex"
- Magdalena Solyga (Basel University): "Emergence and function of cortical offset responses in sound termination detection"
- Jennifer Resnik (Ben Gurion University): "Distinct forms of cortical plasticity underlie difficulties to reliably detect sounds in noisy environments"
- Julio Hechavarria (Goethe University): "Acoustic context modulates natural sound discrimination in the auditory cortex through frequency specific adaptation"
- Antje Ihlefeld (New Jersey Institute of Technology): "Strategies for listening in the dips"
- Srivatsun Sadagopan (University of Pittsburgh): "Probing cortical mechanisms supporting vocalization recognition-in-noise"
- Kishore Kuchibhotla (Johns Hopkins University): "Behavioral and neural correlates of latent knowledge during sensorimotor learning"
- Santiago Jaramillo (University of Oregon): "Spectral surround suppression in the auditory cortex: roles and mechanisms"
- Melissa Caras (University of Maryland): “Contributions of top-down circuits to perceptual learning”
- Anne Takesian (Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary): "Diverse layer 1 circuits gating auditory cortical plasticity"
- Stephen Town (University College London): "Knowing your place: behavior, neurophysiology and modelling of world-centered sound localization"
- Merri Rosen (Northeast Ohio Medical University): "Hearing loss and stress during development: Perceptual deficits and central auditory correlates"
- Michele Insanally (University of Pittsburgh): "Neuronal dynamics of non-classically responsive cortical neurons"
- Nikolas Francis (University of Maryland): "Decision-making modulates neuronal responsiveness and functional connectivity in primary auditory cortex"
EARS Organizing Committee
Matilda Gibbons, Audrey Drotos, Anjali Sinha, Yale Cohen, Maria Geffen, and Lauren Kreeger.
Thank you to our Sponsors: Penn CNI and Penn MindCORE