Email: rjenison@wisc.edu

The long-term objective of my research is to understand the neural mechanisms and coding that underlie perception. How the brain codes information about the physical world around us is a central question facing the field of sensory systems neuroscience. My focus in recent years has been the statistical modeling of populations of neurons in the primary field (AI) of auditory cortex and how the neural firing patterns convey information about the spatial environment. A major challenge in the study of neural coding is identifying the role of coordinated activity between neurons. To this end, I am developing new statistical approaches for analyzing large arrays of simultaneous electrophysiological recordings of cortical neurons.

A second area of research, with the Human Brain Research Laboratory in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Iowa, investigates neural coding of speech at the level of auditory cortex in humans using direct electrophysiological recordings during auditory psychophysical tasks.