Michael Roberts, PhD

Dr. Michael Roberts received a B.A. in biology from The University of Chicago in 2000 and completed a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology at The University of Texas at Austin in 2005. As a postdoctoral fellow with Larry Trussell at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon, Dr. Roberts studied how inhibitory interneurons regulate microcircuit operations in the dorsal cochlear nucleus. Then, as a postdoctoral fellow and research associate with Nace Golding at The University of Texas at Austin, he investigated mechanisms used by neurons in the medial superior olive to process sound localization cues. In 2015, Dr. Roberts became an Assistant Professor in the Kresge Hearing Research Institute, where he established a research lab that aims to determine how neural circuits in the central auditory system process cues important for understanding speech and other vocalizations.

The auditory system provides a number of distinct advantages for analyzing neural circuit function. First, the sensory input to the auditory system is well defined. Second, early computations are divided among highly specialized nuclei in the brainstem. These nuclei perform specific operations, such as determining the spatial source of sounds, that form the building blocks of higher-level auditory tasks like speech processing. Third, the outputs of these diverse brainstem circuits converge in the midbrain in the inferior colliculus (IC). This makes the IC an excellent system for examining how circuits manipulate and combine well-defined streams of information to generate higher order representations.

Our specific goal is to define the mechanistic underpinnings of auditory computations performed by neural circuits in the IC. Powerful methods including in vitro and in vivo patch clamp electrophysiology, optogenetics, genetically engineered mice and viral transduction have opened exciting new avenues for circuit analysis. We are combining these approaches to address the following questions: What are the fundamental microcircuits of the IC and how do they function? How do microcircuits shape speech and vocalization processing in the IC? How are IC microcircuits modified by hearing loss and neurological disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease? Can these modifications be reversed?