ABOUT EUGENIA

ABOUT MY PROJECT

Bats use multiple sensory cues to guide their behaviour. Yet, to date, most research on bats has focused on echolocation and audition in general, even though bats rely greatly on other senses as well. During my PhD I will study how olfactory cues and respiration rhythms interact with auditory processing in bats. I will investigate the relation between breathing rate and vocalization production. I will also study the connection between neural activity of two brain areas, namely the inferior colliculus (IC), processing hub of auditory stimuli before the information reaches the cortex, and the frontal auditory field (FAF), an understudied area in the bat frontal lobe able to process sounds. In addition, I will use olfactory cues to study how odorants affect the breathing rhythm and neural activity in the bats’ brain. Finally, I will use behavioural paradigms in order to assess how auditory and olfactory cues influence decision making in bats.