Interdisciplinary Neuroscience: Seminars/Events

Interdisciplinary Neuroscience GraduAte Program Seminar

April 9, noon

STAR North Atrium

Tobias Teichert, University of Pittsburgh
 
A tale of two distinct auditory short-term memory systems

Mismatch negativity, a macroscopic EEG deflection in response to rare or unexpected events, is believed to depend on the echoic memory system. However, mismatch negativity reflects two distinct processes: (i) adaptation, a passive reduction of responses to repeated sounds, as well as (ii) deviance detection, an active enhancement of unexpected sounds made possible by predictive coding. We show that while the functional properties of adaptation are consistent with the short lifetime of echoic memory, the longer lifetime of deviance detection points to a different memory system. This finding supports the theoretical notion that a mechanism with the proposed flexibility of predictive coding would be hard to implement with a memory system that is as unwieldy, short-lived and prone to interference from subsequent tones as echoic memory.

Tobias Teichert received a BA in mathematics (2002) and an MA-equivalent diploma in psychology (2003) from the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2007 he received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Marburg. After a post-doctoral position at Columbia University, Teichert was appointed to the rank of assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry in September 2013 and was promoted to associate professor in 2022. He holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Bioengineering.  Teichert’s lab studies the neurobiology of auditory function in the non-human primate to better understand altered auditory function in neuropsychiatric conditions, with a specific focus on impaired auditory memory in schizophrenia. A separate yet complementary line of work is aimed at developing novel neuroscientific tools such as the ‘mesoscope’, a 1024-channel ultra-high density volumetric electroencephalography system.

A light lunch will be provided following the seminar. Please RSVP below.

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