Jennifer M Groh, Associate Professor

Research Summary:
How do our senses work together? Our eyes and ears cooperate to help us understand our environment. We frequently perceive visual and auditory stimuli as being bound together if they seem likely to have arisen from a common source. That's why we tend not to notice that the speakers on TV sets or in movie theatres are located beside, and not behind, the screen. Research in my laboratory is devoted to investigating the question of how the brain coordinates the information arising from the ears and eyes. Our findings challenge the historical view of the brain's sensory processing as being automatic, autonomous, and immune from outside influence. We have recently established that neurons in the auditory pathway (inferior colliculus, auditory cortex) alter their responses to sound depending on where the eyes are pointing. This finding suggests that the different sensory pathways meddle in one another's supposedly private affairs, making their respective influences felt even at very early stages of processing. The process of bringing the signals from two different sensory pathways into a common frame of reference begins at a surprisingly early point along the primary sensory pathways.

Representative Publications:   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Porter, KK, Metzger, RR, and Groh, JM (November, 2007). Visual- and saccade-related signals in the primate inferior colliculus.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104(45): 17855-60., 104(45), 17855-60.  [abs] [author's comments]
2. Metzger, RR.,Greene, NT, Porter, KK and Groh, JM (2006). Effects of reward and behavioral context on neural activity in the primate inferior colliculus. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 7468-7476.
3. Mullette-Gillman, OA., Cohen, YE, Groh, JM (2005). Eye-centered, head-centered, and complex coding of visual and auditory targets in the intraparietal sulcus. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, 2331-52.
4. Groh JM, Trause, A. S., Underhill, A. M., Clark, K. R, Inati, S (2001). Eye position influences auditory responses in primate inferior colliculus. Neuron, 29, 509-518. (This article was featured on the cover of the journal).
5. Werner-Reiss, U, Kelly, KA, Trause, AS, Underhill, AM and Groh, JM (2003). Eye position affects activity in primary auditory cortex of primates. Current Biology, 13, 554-562.
6. Porter, KK., Metzger, RR Groh, JM (2006). The representation of eye position in primate inferior colliculus. Journal of Neurophysiology, 95, 1826-42.
7. Metzger RR, Mullette-Gillman OA, Underhill AM, Cohen YE, Groh JM (2004). Auditory saccades from different eye positions in the monkey: implications for coordinate transformations. Journal of Neurophysiology, 92, 2622-7.
8. Groh, JM, Born, RT, and Newsome, WT (1997). How is a sensory map read out? Effects of microstimulation in area MT on smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements. J. Neurosci., 17, 4312-4330.

Lab Personnel: 
David A. Bulkin, graduate student Jessi Cruger, lab manager Norbert Kopco, postdoctoral fellow Joost Maier, postdoctoral fellow Deborah Ross, postdoctoral fellow Tom Heil, lab engineer

Typical Courses Taught::

• Psy 182bs, Perception and the brain