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Staff Profile

Professor Adrian Rees

Professor of Auditory Neuroscience

  • Email: adrian.rees@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6956
  • Address: Biosciences Institute
    Faculty of Medical Sciences
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE2 4HH
Background

Auditory neuroscience aims to understand how the brain processes information about sound.  For many animals, hearing is important for keeping track of what's happening in their environment and for communication.  For humans it underlies those most distinctively human attributes - speech and music. 

I study the brain pathways that underlie hearing; the chain of processing centres running from the ear to the cerebral cortex.  I am to understand how these centres are organised and their role in processing sound using a diverse range of techniques, from recording and labelling single neurons to functional imaging and psychophysics in humans.

Other areas of interest include what underlies the generation of tinnitus (the perception of phantom sound) that blights the lives of its many suffers, and how hearing and vision interact.

Background

I graduated from Oxford University (Keble College) in Physiological Sciences and continued there to gain my doctorate (supervised by Roy Kay), and as Staines Medical Research Fellow at Exeter College.  I left to spend two years as a Harkness Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh where I worked with Aage Møller. On my return to the UK, I worked with Alan Palmer at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham before being appointed to a lectureship in Physiological Sciences at Newcastle.  I am currently in the Biosciences Institute where I am Professor of Auditory Neuroscience and director of the cross-faculty, Newcastle University Centre for Transformative Neuroscience. 

Esteem Factors

Joint winner of the 2010 George Davey Howells Memorial Prize for the Oxford Handbook of Auditory Science, a 3 volume survey of hearing science.   Co-editor of Vol 2, The Auditory Brain.

Fellow of the Physiological Society

Societies

Association for Research in Otaryngology; British Neuroscience Association;  Physiological Society; Society for Neuroscience


 


 

 

 



Research

A main focus of my lab is the functional organisation of the auditory midbrain, the inferior colliculus.  This paired structure is the centre where information from lower brainstem centres converges. We have explored how sound frequency is mapped within it, and, by blocking receptors for neurotransmitters, how excitatory and inhibitory synapses determine the responses of its neurons. We have discovered that nitric oxide signalling is important for mediating synaptic transmission by NMDA receptors in the inferior colliculus, and reported evidence suggesting that this pathway may be activated in tinnitus.

Another emphasis of our research is on the connections the inferior colliculus receives from higher centres of the brain, including many that are not at first glance concerned with sound.  This suggests that the sound processing in the mibrain is influenced by prior information from other systems that helps with sound identification. For example, feedback from the movement centres may help to distinguish external sounds from those generated by our own movements.  

My research has also addressed how modulations in the amplitude and frequency of sounds are extracted and encoded. These temporal fluctuations are fundamental features of natural sounds, such as vocalisations. The information they contain plays an important part in our ability to identify sounds and to separate one sound from another when many competing sounds occur together.  Information about modulation is one of the main sounds attributes available to cochlear implant users. Our analysis of the responses of neurons in the midbrain to such sounds shows that neurons are selective for specific ranges of modulation rate, and we have shown using fMRI that modulation rate, as well as sound frequency, is mapped in the inferior colliculus.


Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

  • PSC 3008  Physiology of the Nervous System (lecturer)
  • PSC 2012 Integrated Physiology (lecturer)
  • MBBS  Stage 2 (lecturer)
  • MBBS   Accelerated Programme (lecturer)
  • CMB 3000 Biomedical Sciences Project  (supervisor)

 

Postgraduate teaching 

  • MMB8019    MRes  Sensory Systems (lecturer)

 


Publications