Josef P. Rauschecker, Ph.D., D.Sc.

Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics;
Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences
Director, Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition

Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences
Georgetown University Medical Center
3970 Reservoir Road, NW
Washington, DC 20007

rauschej@georgetown.edu
telephone: (202) 687 1580
facsimile: (202) 687 0617

Research Interests:

Josef Rauschecker, PhD., is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.  Dr. Rauschecker is interested in the functional organization and plasticity of the cerebral cortex.  Through his extensive research he is trying to better understand how the brain works and is especially interested in how perception, memory, and language are implemented by the brain.  His laboratory is one of only a handful in the country engaged in the neurophysiology of auditory cortex in nonhuman primates. In parallel studies, he is using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans for the study of the neural basis of language, music and other higher auditory processing.  This work should lead to a deeper understanding of brain function in autism, dyslexia, aphasia, agnosia and tinnitus, and more intelligently designed hearing aids and neural prostheses.  In this context his laboratory is also interested in the effects of sensory deprivation during brain development, relating to the question of how the brain of individuals with early blindness or deafness gets reorganized.  These studies of brain plasticity have relevance for the understanding of degenerative diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease.

Doctoral Training:  Ph.D., Munich Institute of Technology (1980); D.Sc. Neurophysiology, Tubingen University (1985).

Postdoctoral Training:  Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. 

 

Selected Publications:

• Rauschecker, J.P., Campbell, F.W. and Atkinson, J.A. (1973). Colour opponent neurones in the human visual system. Nature 235, 42-43
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Singer, W. (1979). Changes in the circuitry of the kitten visual cortex are gated by postsynaptic activity. Nature 280, 58-60
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Singer, W. (1981). The effects of early visual experience on the cat's visual cortex and their possible explanation by Hebb synapses. J. Physiol. 310, 215-239
• Singer, W., Freeman, B. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1981). Restriction of visual experience to a single orientation affects the organization of orientation columns in cat visual cortex: a study with deoxyglucose. Exp. Brain Res. 41, 199-215
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Harris, L.R. (1983). Auditory compensation of the effects of visual deprivation in the cat's superior colliculus. Exp. Brain Res. 50, 69-83
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Hahn, S. (1987) Ketamine-xylazine anaesthesia blocks consolidation of ocular dominance changes in kitten visual cortex. Nature 326, 183-185
• Rauschecker, J.P., von Grünau, M.W. and Poulin, C. (1987) Centrifugal organization of direction preferences in the cat's lateral suprasylvian visual cortex and its relation to flow field processing. J. Neuroscience 7, 943-958
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1988) Visual function of the cat's LP/LS subsystem in global motion processing. Progr. Brain Res. 75, 95-108
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Harris, L.R. (1989) Auditory and visual neurons in the cat's superior colliculus selective for the direction of apparent motion stimuli. Brain Res. 490, 56-63
• Brenner, E. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1990)  Centrifugal motion bias in the cat's lateral suprasylvian visual cortex is independent of early flow field exposure. J. Physiol. 423, 641-660
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1991) Mechanisms of visual plasticity: Hebb synapses, NMDA receptors and beyond. Physiol. Reviews 71, 587-615
• Rauschecker, J.P., Tian, B., Korte, M. and Egert, U. (1992) Crossmodal changes in the somatosensory vibrissa/barrel system of visually deprived animals. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89, 5063-5067
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Korte, M. (1993) Auditory compensation for early blindness in cat cerebral cortex. J. Neurosci. 13 (10), 4538-4548
• Lappe, M. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1994) On heading detection from optic flow.  Nature 369, 712-713
• Tian, B. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1994) Processing of frequency-modulated sounds in the cat's anterior auditory field. J. Neurophysiol. 71 (5), 1959-1975
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1995) Developmental plasticity and memory. Behav. Brain Res. 66, 7-12
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1995) Compensatory plasticity and sensory substitution in the cerebralcortex. Trends in Neurosci. 18 (1), 36-43
• Rauschecker, J.P., Tian, B. and Hauser, M. (1995) Processing of complex sounds in the macaque nonprimary auditory cortex. Science 268, 111-114
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1996) The development of intersensory perception. Comparative perspectives. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 8 (2), 185-188
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1996) Substitution of visual by auditory inputs in the anterior ectosylvian cortex of the cat. Progr. Brain Res. 112, 313-323
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1997) Mechanisms of compensatory plasticity in the cerebral cortex. Advances in Neurology 73, 137-146
• Rauschecker, J.P., Tian, B., Pons, T. and Mishkin, M. (1997) Serial andparallel processing in rhesus monkey auditory cortex. J. Comp. Neurol. 382, 89-103
• Grady, C.L., VanMeter, J.W., Maisog, J.M., Pietrini, P., Krasuski,J. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1997) Attention-related modulation of activityin primary and secondary auditory cortex. Neuroreport 8, 2511-2516
• Jezzard, P., Rauschecker, J.P. and Malonek, D. (1997) An in-vivo model for functional MRI in cat visual cortex.  Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 38, 699-705
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1997) Processing of complex sounds in the auditory cortex of cat, monkey and man. Acta Otolaryngologica (Stockh.) Suppl. 532, 34-38
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1998) Parallel processing in the auditory cortex of primates. Audiology and Neuro-Otology 3, 86-103
• Neville, H.J., Bavelier, D., Corina, D., Rauschecker, J.P, Karni, A., Lalwani, A., Braun, A., Clark, V., Jezzard, P., Turner, R. (1998) Cerebral organization for language in deaf and hearing subjects: Biological constraints and effects of experience. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95, 922-929
• Tian, B. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1998) Processing of frequency-modulated sounds in the cat's posterior auditory field. J. Neurophysiol. 79, 2629-2642
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1998) Cortical control of thalamus: top down processing and plasticity. Nature Neuroscience 1, 179-180
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1998) Cortical processing of complex sounds. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 8. 516-521
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1999) Auditory cortical plasticity: a comparison with other sensory systems. Trends in Neurosciences 22, 74-80
• Bushara, K.O., Weeks R.A., Ishii K., Catalan M.-J., Rauschecker J.P. and Hallett M. (1999) Evidence for modality-specific frontal and parietal areas for auditory and visual spatial localization in humans. Nature Neuroscience 2, 759-766
• Rauschecker J.P. (1999) Making brain circuits listen. Science 285, 1686-1687
• Romanski, L. M., Tian, B., Fritz, J., Mishkin, M., Goldman-Rakic, P.S. and Rauschecker, J.P. (1999) Dual streams of auditory afferents target multiple domains in the primate prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience 2, 1131-1136
• Weeks, R., Horwitz, B., Aziz-Sultan, A., Tian, B., Wessinger, C. M., Cohen, L., Hallett, M. and Rauschecker, J.P. (2000) A positron emission tomographic study of auditory localization in the congenitally blind. Journal of Neuroscience 20(7), 2664-2672
• Rauschecker, J.P., and Tian, B. (2000) Mechanisms and streams for processing of "what" and "where" in auditory cortex. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97 (22), 11800-11806
• Wessinger, C.M., Van Meter, J., Tian, B., Van Lare, J., Pekar, J. and Rauschecker, J.P. (2001) Hierarchical organization of human auditory cortex revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. J. Cognitive Neuroscience 13(1), 1-7
• Tian, B., Reser, D., Durham, A., Kustov, A. and Rauschecker, J.P. (2001) Functional specialization in rhesus monkey auditory cortex. Science 292, 290-293
• Rauschecker, J. P. and Shannon, R.V. (2002) Sending sound to the brain. Science 295, 1025-1029
• Warren, J.D., Zielinski, B.A., Green, G.G.R., Rauschecker, J.P., Griffiths, T.D. (2002) Analysis of sound source motion by the human brain. Neuron 34, 1-20
• Rauschecker, J. P. (2002) Beethoven's anvil. Book review. Science 296, 1032
• Rauschecker, J. P. (2003) Tales of a Hobbesian Cynic. Book review of "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker. Nature Medicine 9, 816
• Rauschecker, J. P. and Tian, B. (2004) Processing of band-passed noise in the lateral auditory belt cortex of the rhesus monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology 91(6), 2578-2589
• Tian, B. and Rauschecker, J. P. (2004) Processing of frequency-modulated sounds in the lateral auditory belt cortex of the rhesus monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology 92(5), 2993-3013
• Kosmal, A., Malinowska, M., Woznicka, A. and Rauschecker, J. P. (2004) Cytoarchitecture and thalamic afferents of the sylvian and composite posterior gyri of the canine temporal cortex. Brain Res 1023(2), 279-301

Selected Books and Book Chapters:

• Holland, P.C. Bolles, R.C., Changeux, J.-P., Gibbon, J., Menzel, E.W., Mishkin, M., Rauschecker, J.P., Revusky, S., Shettleworth, S.J., Singer, W.J., Terrace, H.S., Werka, T.F. and Zielinski, K. (1984) Biology of learning in nonhuman mammals. In: Marler, P. and Terrace, H.S. (eds.), The Biology of Learning. Dahlem Konferenzen. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo, pp. 533-551
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Marler, P. (eds.) (1987) Imprinting and Cortical Plasticity. Comparative Aspects of Sensitive Periods, John Wiley & Sons, New York
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1990) How does developmental plasticity relate to the biology of memory? In: Symposia Medica Hoechst "The Biology of Memory", L.R. Squire and E. Lindenlaub (eds.), Schattauer: Stuttgart, New York, vol. 23, pp.111-132
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Sejnowski, T. (1994) Processing of visual and auditory space and its modification by experience. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 6, J.D. Cowan, G. Tesauro, and J. Alspector (eds.), pp. 1186-1187
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1996) Wissenschaftskarriere in Übersee. Ein Erfahrungsbericht. In: L. Kürten, M. Lemmens (eds.) "Nachwuchs der Forschung", Raabe, pp. 99-107
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1996) Neurobiologische Voraussetzungen für Reorganisation und Kompensation im Zentralnervensystem. In: G. Gross-Selbeck (ed.) "Aktuelle Neuropädiatrie 1995", Ciba-Geigy, Wehr/Baden, pp. 17-28
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1998/1999) Auditory physiology. MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, pp. 52-56 [http://mitpress.mit.edu/MITECS] 
• Rauschecker, J.P. (1999) Auditory plasticity and sensory substitution. In: J. Grafman and Y. Christen (eds.) "Neuronal Plasticity: Building a Bridge from the Laboratory to the Clinic", Fondation Ipsen, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, pp.  37-48
• Rauschecker, J.P. (2000) Developmental neuroplasticity across sensory modalities. In: C.A. Shaw, J.C.  McEachern (eds.) "Toward a Theory of Neuroplasticity", Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia, pp. 244-260
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Henning, P. (2000) Crossmodal expansion of cortical maps in early blindness. In: J. Kaas (ed.) "The Mutable Brain", Harwood Academic Publishers, Singapore, pp. 243- 259
• Rauschecker, J.P. (2001) Cortical plasticity and music. In: R. Zatorre, I. Peretz (eds.) "The Biological Foundations of Music", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 930, pp. 330-336
• Rauschecker, J.P. (2002) Sensory deprivation. In: V.S. Ramachandran (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, Academic Press , vol. 4, pp. 277-287
• Rauschecker, J.P. (2003) Auditory reassignment. In: F. Boller and J. Grafman (eds.), Handbook of Neuropsychology, 2nd edition, Vol. 9: Plasticity and Rehabilitation, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 167-176
• Rauschecker, J.P. and Tian, B. (2003) Processing streams for "what" and "where" in auditory association cortex. In: T. Ono, G. Matsumoto, R.R. Llinas, A. Berthoz, R. Norgren, H. Nishijo, R. Tamura (eds.), Cognition and Emotion in the Brain, Elsevier, pp. 37-51
• Rauschecker, J.P. (2004) Crossmodal consequences of visual deprivation. In: G. Calvert, C. Spence, B. Stein (eds.), Handbook of Multisensory Processes, MIT Press (in press)

For more information, go to PubMed at the following link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/