We’ve evolved to avoid harm in dynamic and often stressful environments by rapidly altering the performance of key bodily functions. One important adaptation is in our hearing, where the auditory system must become more sensitive in times of need while also preventing itself from failure or being damaged. This is because sound, the very signal our ears detect, can be damaging when it is too loud for too long! My work aims to determine how the brain enables our auditory system to dynamically react to stressful signals in the world around us.
Photo by Celia Muto
What drew you to this area of neuroscience?
I love music, so indulge me for a second. If you put on your favorite stereo record and take a moment to listen, you’ll notice many features of the different instruments and voices you’re hearing—including their location, their timbre, their loudness, and when they start and stop. This is because our brain takes relatively simple input from our two ears and transforms this into a useful, and often beautiful, three-dimensional auditory scene. I was drawn to auditory neuroscience because I wanted to understand how the cells in our brain enable our hearing/listening experience to feel so rich and seamless.
What has been the most surprising thing you’ve learned in the lab or classroom so far?
It took a while for this to sink in, but I’ve learned and accepted that we can’t completely trust our perceptions. What we experience through our senses is really useful, yet it’s only a limited sample of our surroundings. In fact, our brain makes things up! One of my favorite ways to remind myself of this is by identifying the “blind spot” that each eye has where there are no light-detecting cells. To do this, draw two small dots a few inches apart on a piece of paper, close one eye, and hold the paper near your open eye so that the dots are on the same horizontal plane. When you look at the dot that’s closest to your nose and slowly move the paper away from your face, the other dot will disappear. Do you still trust your perceptions?
What is the trait you most admire in others?
Curiosity—it’s contagious and encourages you to reflect on your own work. It drives people to ask innovative questions, to notice what’s been overlooked, and to candidly communicate about their interests, or “to geek out”, if you will. When others share what they are excited to explore and learn, it’s impossible not to give them your full attention.
What are your hopes for the future?
Representation is crucial for fostering equity and connection in academia, yet many populations remain underrepresented, and I believe this hinders scientific innovation and the diversity of the inquiries we pursue. This is because science is an endeavor that depends on people to ask important questions, to design convincing experiments, and to communicate insightful conclusions. Yet, as individuals, the questions we ask are influenced, and also limited, by our interests, our past experiences, and our culture. My hope for the future is that we stop bottlenecking the questions we can even ask by working to broaden representation and equity in academia.
What are your hobbies outside of the lab—current, past, or future?
When it comes to hobbies outside of the lab, I’ve had the privilege to dabble in a little bit of everything (I even learned a few yo-yo tricks during the pandemic). If I have to choose, I gravitate most toward playing music and cooking food. For the last few years, I’ve been on a fermentation kick so you will often find me in the kitchen mixing salt or sugar into things and seeing what happens over time. The results are often delicious.