Roja Manohar and Dr. Alyson Brokaw training bats in a flight tunnel.

Our lab studies bats because of their sensitive hearing, extraordinary biosonar capabilities and their broad repertoire of social communication behaviors.

We study the behavior and neurophysiology of mammalian auditory system using bats.  Their auditory systems is highly specialized for echolocation, which means that (unlike in other animals) we know precisely what different sounds mean to bats.  This advantage makes it easier to elucidate the neural circuits and mechanisms used by the auditory system to encode sounds.  Furthermore, we gain insights into the cognitive strategies by which bats locate and classify targets when listening to echo streams.  The biosonar performance of bats and cetaceans is far superior to man-made sonar, so lessons learned from bats also provide inspirations for technological improvements.

Communication is an essential part of being social. An animal’s vocal communications provide a window into their cognitive capabilities, motivations, and behavioral ecology.   Vocal communication systems are highly diverse because they have been shaped by intense natural and sexual selection. Studying  communication behaviors and their underlying brain networks provides important insights into the evolution of the social brain.
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Echolocation & Navigation

Echolocation is an exciting model system for exploring how sensory and motor brain pathways interact to control behavior on a millisecond time scale.   Our behavioral studies explore how bats modulate their echolocation behavior in different contexts and across the seasons.  This research has direct relevance for understanding how bats interact with their environment, and provide bio-inspired innovations for artificial sensors used in robotics and autonomous systems.

​Functional Genomics

Recent advances in functional genomic tools  offers exiting new opportunities to explore the molecular and cellular foundations and hearing and echolocation. Our lab is using RNAseq data collected from wild, naturally behaving animals  to investigate circadian and seasonal changes in bat sensory systems. New projects will apply spatial transcriptomics methods to better understand how the mammalian brain changes with the seasons. Lab-based behavioral experiments employ viral-vector based gene delivery systems to test the roles of specialized cell types in the brain for hearing and understanding complex sounds.

Auditory Neuroscience

We use bioacoustics, electrophysiology,  chemogenetics, optical imaging and functional genomics tools to map the neurocircuits and molecular biology of mammalian hearing. 
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Echo Perception and Auditory Object coding : Bats rely upon fine acoustic features embedded within streams of echoes to reconstruct the size and shape of targets. Understanding how the auditory system represents different sounds with different patterns of neural activity is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Bats offer unique opportunities to investigate how the brain interprets sensory information.