Cynthia Moss
 |
Professor 301/405-0353 TEL |
Research Interests
Auditory information processing and sensorimotor integration in vertebrates; neuroethologically-based study of hearing and perceptually-guided behavior in the echolocating bat; acoustical, psychophysical, perceptual, computational and neurophysiological studies to develop integrative theories on brain-behavior relations in animal systems
Background Information
Cynthia F. Moss received a B.S. (summa cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1979 and a Ph.D. from Brown University in 1986. She was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tübingen (1985-1987) and a Research Fellow at Brown University (1987-1989) before accepting a faculty appointment at Harvard University, beginning in 1989. At Harvard, Dr. Moss received the Phi Beta Kappa teaching award (1992) and was named the Morris Kahn Associate Professor (1994). In 1995, Dr. Moss moved to the University of Maryland, where she is now a Professor in the Department of Psychology and ISR. She is also the director of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program and co-directs an NIH Training Program in Neuroethology. She is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the Acoustical Society of America, International Society for Neuroethology, and the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. Her lab includes undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral researchers, supported by funds from NSF, NIH, Howard Hughes, the Whitehall Foundation, and private industry. Dr. Moss received an NSF Young Investigator Award in 1992 and a Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies Fellowship in 2000. In 2001, Moss was elected a Fellow to the Acoustical Society of America. She has edited two books and published over 50 chapters and research articles.
Her research program is directed at understanding auditory information processing and sensorimotor integration in vertebrates. In our lab, the echolocating bat serves as a model system for a neuroethologically-based study of hearing and perceptually-guided behavior. Our work combines acoustical, psychophysical, perceptual, computational and neurophysiological studies, with the goal of developing integrative theories on brain-behavior relations in animal systems.
Current behavioral studies focus on the processing of dynamic acoustic signals for the perception of auditory scenes. The aims of this work are to develop a broad understanding of complex signal processing in biological systems and to establish an empirical foundation for integrative models of spatial information processing, the perceptual organization of sound, and adaptive motor behaviors.
Neurophysiological studies examine how the brain processes sensory information and how this information is integrated with motor programs to permit perceptually-guided behavior. Current experiments focus on the functional organization of the bat's superior colliculus, a midbrain structure implicated in the coordination of multimodal sensory inputs and goal-directed motor behaviors. Recent results in the lab reveal distinct functional specializations in the superior colliculus that are important for the bat's acoustic orientation by sonar, and these data are used to develop a theoretical framework on the functional role of the mammalian midbrain.
Links
Department
of Psychology
Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) program
Learning
and Intelligent Systems
Auditory
Neuroethology Lab
Computational
Sensorimotor Systems Laboratory
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