Segmentation and identification of vocal communication in the Zebra Finch
Frederic Theunissen, Professor
Psychology
Open. Apprentices needed for the fall semester. Enter your application online beginning August 21st. The deadline to apply is Monday, August 31st, 4pm.
How does the brain represent meaningful information from sound? This project investigates this question by examining natural vocal communication between zebra finches. Zebra finches are gregarious songbirds with a very rich vocal repertoire of calls to communicate in different behavioral contexts: peer recognition, mate interactions, offspring care, etc. In such social exchanges, the auditory system must perform a series of signal processing steps, including 1) segmenting where meaningful acoustics begin and end from a continuous audio stream), and 2) identifying the content and meaning of each segment. Using neural and behavioral experimental data previously collected in the lab, this project aims to understand the coding and computational strategies involved in these two stages of sound processing. By analyzing neural recordings of zebra finches freely communicating with its peer / mate, we investigate how the auditory system performs segmentation and identification of meaning during vocal communication.
Role: Audio recordings from pairs of zebra finches were obtained in the lab and we need help for performing a manual curation of the data. The students will run a custom python software written by lab members to manually annotate audio recordings in order to identify vocalization segments and calltypes in the recordings. The students will learn how sound is represented and analyzed, and state-of-the-art techniques that are used to record and extract bioacoustic features of animal vocalizations.
Students will attend weekly lab meetings when possible. Additional exploratory data analysis and modeling opportunities may be available upon completion of primary annotation assignments and through discussion with research mentors.
Qualifications: Successful research apprentices complete their assignments in a timely manner, maintain open communication with other members of the research group and with the research coordinator in particular, ask questions when they need help or guidance, and actively ensure (through communicating with the research coordinator) that they are getting the experience they want from the URAP program. Good communication skills and patience are required, knowledge of sound physics is desirable but not essential, a passion for listening to animal vocal behavior is highly desirable!
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Kailin Zhuang, Graduate Student
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: This can be a remote project that can be performed at home. Ideally, this position is a combination of in-person and remote work.
Related website: https://github.com/theunissenlab/BioSoundTutorial
Related website: https://github.com/theunissenlab/BioSoundTutorial