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Teaching Interests: Animal Behavior, Vertebrate Biology, Neuroanatomy.
Research Interests: Evolution and anatomy of the vertebrate
auditory and lateral line systems.
Catherine McCormick is a comparative vertebrate neuroanatomist whose
research focuses on the organization and evolution of the four sensory
modalities of the inner ear and lateral line: the auditory, vestibular,
mechanosensory, and electronsensory systems. These four sensory
systems have a complicated and apparently unusual evolutionary history
that includes multiple losses, inventions, and functional changes.
In effect, this diversity has created a series of natural experiments
that allow researchers to explore the impact of major changes in
the sensory periphery on the organization of brain circuits subserving
these sensory systems. As an example, McCormick's recent studies
of auditory circuitry in a variety of bony fishes indicate that
a primitive pattern of circuitry has been modified at least twice
among fishes that are "hearing specialists". This circuitry
was previously thought to have been modified in land vertebrates
only.
McCormick has been awarded grants for her studies of vertebrate
brain evolution since 1981 from the National Institutes of Health
and the National Science Foundation, and she has been successful
at obtaining NSF funds since coming to Oberln. Her most recent publications
appear in the journals Brain, Behavior and Evolution, Hearing Research
and in the monograph The Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (Springer-Verlag).
Students have worked in her laboratory on various research projects,
including some sponsored by undergraduate research grants for the
Howard Hughes Mdicl Institute. Some of these students have co-authored
manuscripts with McCormick.
Catherine.McCormick@oberlin.edu
Office: Science Center A134
Phone: x8322
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