Richard D. Mooney

Motivated by a longstanding interest in both neuroscience and music, his major research interests are understanding how songbirds learn to sing and how mice produce and perceive their innate ultrasonic vocalizations. Recent research has elucidated the circuit mechanisms that enable juvenile songbirds to form a memory of a tutor’s song, shown how midbrain dopamine neurons and cortico-basal ganglia circuitry are engaged during vocal motor learning, and mapped the structure and function of intracortical circuits that convey motor-related corollary discharge signals to the auditory cortex.