Background

An appropriate reaction to our current circumstances require us to extract sensory information from our environment and integrate it with information related to our internal state and context. For example, the sound of approaching footsteps is perceived as safe when walking down a well-lit street but as dangerous when walking down a dark alley, thus triggering a different behavioral response. In our lab we seek to understand the variability in the representation of auditory signals due to ongoing changes in internal state and external context, at the behavioral, cellular and network levels. To achieve this, we study brain activity and network connectivity as animals engage in auditory perceptual tasks. Our ultimate goal is to understand the link between auditory sensation and the perceptual experience; and how, perceptual adaptations can sometimes improve our daily decision-making, while other times, distort the neural representation of sensory stimuli, contributing to sensory and mental health disorders.


Current Projects

How is sensory processing shaped by internal state?
Sometimes contexts are not external and do not necessarily have different physical characteristics; instead, they can be defined by our internal state. For example, hearing the sound of a crying child may take on a different meaning according to our internal state. In a normative internal state, we might pick up the crying child and soothe him, realizing that this is an everyday occurrence. In an aversive internal state, such as stress or depression, the exact same sound may cause a dramatically different reaction, such as intense anxiety and despair. By combining in-vivo electrophysiology, optogenetics, rodent behavior and in-vivo two-photon imaging, we aim to understand how internal state shapes the way auditory information is represented and processed in health and disease.

How does external context modulate sensory perception?
Contextual information plays a major role in sensory perception. The same sensory stimulus can have different meanings depending on the context within which it is presented. For example, hearing the sound of dripping water from outside or inside your house, will have a different meaning and elicit a different response. We are designing new behavioral tasks to understand how the same sound can give rise to different behavioral responses; and we are we monitoring and perturbing neural activity to test the role of the auditory system in this process.

Resnik J and Polley DB, 2017. “Fast-spiking GABA circuit dynamics in the auditory cortex predict recovery of sensory processing following peripheral nerve damage", eLife, 6:e21452. doi: 10.7554/eLife.21452.

Chambers A, Resnik J , Yuan Y , Whitton J, Edge A, Liberman C, Polley DB, 2016. “Central gain restores auditory processing following near-complete cochlear denervation", Neuron, 17;89 (4):867-79. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.12.041.

Resnik J, and Paz R, 2015. “Fear generalization in the primate amygdala", Nature Neuroscience, 18(2):188-90. doi: 10.1038/nn.3900.

Resnik J, Sobel N and Paz R, 2011. "Auditory aversive learning increases discrimination thresholds", Nature Neuroscience, 14(6):791-6. doi: 10.1038/nn.2802.

Nist-Lund C, Pan B , Patterson A, Asai Y , Chen T, Zhou W, Zhu H, Romero S, Resnik J, Polley DB, Geleoc G, and Holt J, 2019. "Next Generation Gene Therapy Improves Hearing and Balance in Genetic Models of Inner Ear Dysfunction", Nature Communications, NCOMMS-18-18640C.

Romero S, Hight AE, Clayton KK, Resnik J, Williamson RS , Hancock KE, Polley DB, 2019. “Cellular and Widefield Imaging of Sound Frequency Organization in Primary and Higher Order Fields of the Mouse Auditory Cortex", Cerebral Cortex, 1-20. 10.1093/cercor/bhz190.

Livneh U, Resnik J, Shohat Y, Paz R, 2012. “Self-monitoring of social facial expressions in the primate amygdala and cingulate cortex”, PNAS, 109(46):18956-61. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1207662109.