Duke Psychology & Neuroscience

Browse People

  • Jennifer M Groh

  • Professor
  • Psychology and Neuroscience
  • Phone: (919) 681-6536
  • Fax: 919-681-0815
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Other


    Kurtis Gruters, graduate student
    Karen Waterstradt, lab manager
    Valeria Caruso, postdoctoral fellow
    Daniel Pages, graduate student

  • Specialties

    • Systems and Integrative Neuroscience
    • Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Research Summary

    Perception, Cognitive Neuroscience, Systems Neuroscience

  • Research Description

    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.

  • Areas of Interest

    vision
    audition
    hearing
    multisensory integration
    eye movements

  • Teaching

    • PSY 182BS
      • PERCEPTION AND THE BRAIN

  • Education

      • Ph. D.,
      • Neuroscience,
      • University of Pennsylvania,
      • 1993
      • M. S.,
      • Neuroscience,
      • University of Michigan,
      • 1990
      • A. B.,
      • Biology,
      • Princeton University,
      • 1988

  • Awards, Honors and Distinctions

      • Thomas Langford Lecture,
      • Duke University,
      • April, 2012
      • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship,
      • April, 2009
      • Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow,
      • National Academy of Sciences,
      • November, 2007
      • EJLB Foundation Research Grant,
      • 2002
      • The Walter and Constance Burke Research Initiation Awards for Junior Faculty,
      • Dartmouth,
      • 2001
      • John Merck Scholarship in the Biology of Developmental Disabilities in Children,
      • 1999
      • ONR Young Investigator Program Award,
      • 1999
      • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship,
      • 1998
      • McKnight Scholar Award,
      • 1998
      • Whitehall Foundation Research Grant,
      • 1998
      • Finalist, Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience,
      • 1994
      • Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship,
      • 1994
      • Joanne S. Diamond Award Lecture in Behavioral Neurobiology,
      • Duke University,
      • 1994
      • Alfred N. Richards Predoctoral Fellowship in Biomedical Science,
      • 1992
      • National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship,
      • 1989
      • Phi Beta Kappa,
      • Princeton University,
      • 1988
      • Senior Book Prize in Biology,
      • Princeton University,
      • 1988
      • Sigma Xi,
      • Princeton University,
      • 1988
      • Graduate Fellowship,
      • National Science Foundation,
      • 1988
      • Regents Fellowship (not used),
      • University of Michigan,
      • 1988
      • Rotary Fellowship (not used),
      • 1988
      • Summer Research Fellowship,
      • National Science Foundation,
      • 1987

  • Selected Publications

      • Porter, KK, Metzger, RR, and Groh, JM.
      • 2007.
      • Visual- and saccade-related signals in the primate inferior colliculus..
      • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104(45): 17855-60.
      • 104:
      • 17855-60
      • .
      Publication Description

      The inferior colliculus (IC) is normally thought of as a predominantly auditory structure because of its early position in the ascending auditory pathway just before the auditory thalamus. Here, we show that a majority of IC neurons (64% of 180 neurons) in awake monkeys carry visual- and/or saccade-related signals in addition to their auditory responses (P

      Press coverage of this work has appeared in Scientific American (ScientificAmerican.com), Fox News (foxnews.com), the CBC radio program “Quirks and Quarks”, the Radio New Zealand program “Nights”, the Telegraph, the Italian science magazine “Newton”, and LiveScience.com and numerous other online science news web sites.

      • 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
      • .
      • 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
      • .
      • 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
      • .
      • 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
      • .
      • Porter, KK., Metzger, RR Groh, JM.
      • 2006.
      • The representation of eye position in primate inferior colliculus.
      • Journal of Neurophysiology
      • 95:
      • 1826-42
      • .
      • 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
      • .
      • 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
      • .
  • View All Publications
  • Search Publications

  • Postdoctoral Students

    • Valeria Caruso
      • 2010 - present
    • Jung Ah Lee
      • June, 2008 - 2011
    • Joost Maier
      • 2007 - 2009
    • Deborah Ross
      • 2007 - present
    • Norbert Kopco
      • 2006 - 2008
    • Lucas Santos
      • 2006 - 2007
    • Uri Werner-Reiss
      • 2000 - 2006
    • Ryan Metzger
      • 2000 - 2006
Jennifer M Groh
  • brain scan