Nicholas AudetteNew York University | NYU · Center for Neural Science (CNS)
Nicholas Audette
Doctor of Philosophy
Starting a lab at University of Connecticut focused on flexible auditory processing
About
11
Publications
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Introduction
I am finishing my post-doctoral research at New York University studying the brain regions involved in auditory learning, memory, and prediction. Beginning in 2025 I will be opening my lab as an Assistant Professor at University of Connecticut. I approach neuroscience problems with an array of skills ranging from anatomy to computation in an effort to understand how groups of neurons work together in circuits to flexibly process incoming sensory stimuli across a variety of behavioral contexts.
Publications
Publications (11)
Higher-order thalamic nuclei, such as the posterior medial nucleus (POm) in the somatosensory system or the pulvinar in the visual system, densely innervate the cortex and can influence perception and plasticity. To systematically evaluate how higher-order thalamic nuclei can drive cortical circuits, we investigated cell-type selective responses to...
Neocortical circuits are sensitive to experience, showing both anatomical and electrophysiological changes in response to altered sensory input. We examined input- and cell-type-specific changes in thalamo- and intracortical pathways during learning using an automated, home-cage sensory association training (SAT) paradigm coupling multi-whisker sti...
Many of the sensations experienced by an organism are caused by their own actions, and accurately anticipating both the sensory features and timing of self-generated stimuli is crucial to a variety of behaviors. In the auditory cortex, neural responses to self-generated sounds exhibit frequency-specific suppression, suggesting that movement-based p...
The detection and signaling of prediction errors is central to the theory of predictive processing. Experiments that alter the sensory outcome of an animal's behavior reveal enhanced neural responses to unexpected self-generated stimuli, including many neurons that do not respond to the same stimulus heard passively. These neurons may reflect the v...
Neural circuits construct internal ‘world-models’ to guide behavior. The predictive processing framework posits that neural activity signaling sensory predictions and concurrently computing prediction-errors is a signature of those internal models. Here, to understand how the brain generates predictions for complex sensorimotor signals, we investig...
Comparing expectation with experience is an important neural computation performed throughout the brain and is a hallmark of predictive processing. Experiments that alter the sensory outcome of an animal’s behavior reveal enhanced neural responses to unexpected self-generated stimuli, indicating that populations of neurons in sensory cortex may ref...
Many of the sensations experienced by an organism are caused by their own actions, and accurately anticipating both the sensory features and timing of self-generated stimuli is crucial to a variety of behaviors. In the auditory cortex, neural responses to self-generated sounds exhibit frequency-specific suppression, suggesting that movement-based p...
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ABSTRACT
Behavior exerts a strong influence over sensory responses in the brain. In the auditory cortex, neural responses to self-generated sounds are suppressed, suggesting that prediction may play a critical role in local sensory processing. However, it is unclear whether this phenomenon derives from a precise movement-based pred...
Significance statement:
Development and sensory experience can change synapse properties in the neocortex. Here we use a semiautomated analysis of electron microscopy images for an unbiased, column-wide analysis of synapse changes. This analysis reveals new loci for synaptic change that can be verified by targeted electrophysiological investigatio...
Neighboring cortical excitatory neurons show considerable heterogeneity in their responses to sensory stimulation. We hypothesized that a subset of layer 2 excitatory neurons in the juvenile (P18 to 27) mouse whisker somatosensory cortex, distinguished by expression of the activity-dependent fosGFP reporter gene, would be preferentially activated b...