Anthony Zador, MD, PhD

Alle Davis Harris Professor of Biology
Program Chair in Neuroscience

My laboratory uses a combination of physiological, molecular, behavioral and computational approaches to study the cortical mechanisms underlying auditory processing, attention and decision making in rodents. Understanding these processes will help us understand the neural basis of cognition, and may also help us develop treatments for cognitive disorders.

I have been at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1999. My pedigree includes graduate work with Christof Koch (Caltech) and Tom Brown (Yale), and a postdoc with Chuck Stevens (Salk Institute). I have published some papers and have also founded some meetings, including the annual Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) meeting, which now draws over 500 participants.


Publicity

  • Click here to see a recent interview I gave about my work to Big Think.

  • "The Rat Pack" Nature, 465:282-283. [This is about me, not by me]


    Recent publications

  • Jaramillo, S. and Zador A.M. (2011) "Auditory cortex mediates the perceptual effects of acoustic temporal expectation " Nature Neursocience, in press.

  • Oviedo, H., Bureau, I., Svoboda, K. and Zador A.M. (2010) "The functional asymmetry of auditory cortex is reflected in the organization of local circuits." Nature Neursocience, 13:1413-1420.

  • Lima, S., Znamenskiy, P., Hromadka, T. and Zador A.M. (2009) "PINP: A new method of tagging neuronal populations for identification during in vivo electrophysiological recording" PLoS ONE, 4(7): e6099

  • Otazu, G., Tai, L-H., Yang, Y. and Zador A.M. (2009) "Engaging in an auditory task suppresses responses in auditory cortex" Nature Neuroscience, 2(5):646-54

  • Yang, Y., DeWeese, M.R., Otazu, G. and Zador A.M. (2008) "Millisecond-scale differences in neural activity in auditory cortex can drive decisions" Nature Neuroscience, 11: 1262-3.

    click here for full list of publications including PDFs



    Auditory Attention: From Synapses to Behavior

    Research Overview

    My laboratory is interested in how neural circuits underlie sensory processing and attention, particularly in the auditory cortex. To address these questions, we use a combination of computational, electrophysiological and imaging techniques at the molecular, synaptic, cellular, circuit and behavioral levels.

    Our approach is to combine the tools of molecular biology with computational and systems neuroscience. Although it may seem obvious that one should turn to molecular biology, the surprising fact is that systems (and particularly cognitive) neuroscience tends to be technically very conservative, using techniques developed decades ago. Because my laboratory uses rodents as the model system, we can exploit the full armamentarium of modern cellular and molecular neuroscience techniques.

    Research in the lab is organized around three main questions:

    We use a variety of techniques and preparations, including:

    Zador Lab People