Ramnarayan Ramachandran, Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins University (2000) Assistant Professor The goal of my research is to understand how the responses of neurons underlie auditory behaviors. I am currently interested in our ability to hear even in the presence of loud background noise (such as at a party), a situation where current hearing aids fail. My short-term goals are to determine the nature of functionally segregated parallel pathways that arise in the brainstem that allow us to listen in noise, and the transformation of those neuronal responses at higher levels of the auditory pathway that mediate behavior. My main experimental approach consists of recording the responses of neurons during behavior. Quantitative analyses and modeling are then employed to characterize response transformation and correlation with behavior. My long-term goals include understanding the nature of changes in the auditory brainstem following hearing impairment and hearing aid designs that combat those changes, and to understand the role of the parallel pathways in other auditory behaviors. Selected Publications: Ramachandran, R. and Lisberger, S. G. (2006) Transformation of vestibular signals into motor commands in the vestibuloocular reflex pathways of monkeys. J. Neurophysiol. 96(3): 1061-1074. Ramachandran, R. and Lisberger, S. G. (2005) Normal performance and expression of learning in the vestibuloocular reflex at high frequencies. J. Neurophysiol. 93(4): 2028-2038. Wallace, M. T., Ramachandran, R., and Stein, B. E. (2004) A revised view of sensory cortex parcellation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 101(7): 2167-2172. Davis, K. A., Ramachandran, R., and May, B. J. (2003) Auditory processing of spectral cues for sound localization in the inferior colliculus. JARO 4(2): 148-163. Ramachandran, R., Davis, K. A., and May, B. J. (2000) Rate representation of tones in noise in the inferior colliculus of decerebrate cats. JARO 1(2): 144-160. Ramachandran, R., Davis, K. A., and May, B. J. (1999) Single unit responses in the inferior colliculus of decerebrate cats  I. Classification based on frequency response maps. J. Neurophysiol. 82(1): 152-163.   e-mail me