Directors + Staff
301 405 5925
Robert Dooling
C-CEBH Core Center Director, Professor
UMD Psychology
2123D Biology-Psychology Bldg.
Research Interests : Research in the Laboratory of Comparative Psychoacoustics is aimed at understanding how animals communicate with one another using sound and whether there are parallels with how humans communicate with one another using speech and language. Birds such as songbirds and parrots, like humans, rely on hearing and learning to develop a normal vocal repertoire. We often study budgerigars (parakeets), canaries, zebra finches, and other small birds. For instance, we have specific projects on vocal learning and vocal development in budgerigars, the regeneration of auditory hair cells and recovery of hearing and the vocalizations in small birds following hearing damage, and the effect of noise on hearing. Other studies focus on how small birds localize sounds, how they perceive complex sounds such as bird vocalizations and human speech, and how the bird ear functions.
Animals : Birds
301 405 1940
Arthur Popper
C-CEBH Center Associate Director, Professor
UMD Biology
2225 Biology-Psychology Bldg.
Research Interests : The Aquatic Bioacoustics Laboratory (ABL) is primarily involved in the study of hearing by aquatic organisms. Most work in the laboratory focuses on fishes, although studies have been done with other non-mammalian vertebrates. Our fish studies focus on various aspects of hearing that range from behavioral investigations to determine what an animal can hear to physiological investigations of the responses of the ear and brain. Most recently, the lab has become very involved in issues of the effects of human-generated (anthropogenic) sound on aquatic organisms. This has resulted in a series of studies that explore behavioral and physiological effects of increased ambient sounds on fish.
Animals : Fish
301 405 7861
