Israel Nelken Lab

ELSC Members

Milton and Brindell Gottlieb Chair in Brain Science

Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology

We study the auditory system using a combination of behavioral, electrophysiological and imaging techniques, mostly in animal models but also in humans.

Sounds and the Brain

We investigate the transformation of sound from a physical phenomenon to a perceptual experience. Initial neural representations in the ascending auditory system closely correlate with the momentary physical characteristics of sounds. However, by the time signals reach the midbrain, they begin to integrate increasingly rich contextual information. In the primary auditory cortex, sound responses are profoundly influenced not only by spectro-temporal context but also by the animal’s actions, the specific task at hand, and the level of attention and engagement.

We propose that these representations form part of an inner model of the world, which is essential for decision-making in sound-guided behaviors and serves as the foundation for the perception of sounds.

Here is a sample of our recent and ongoing projects:

Context-dependent sound representations in auditory cortex >>

Early sound exposure and sound preferences in mice >>

Sound-guided behavior and neural dynamics in auditory cortex of freely-moving rats >>

Representation of actions in auditory cortex: insights from reinforcement learning and deep neural networks >>

Dina Moshitch

Lab Manager

Lital Summer

Lab administrative officer

Samira Souffi

Post Doc

Moran Aharoni

Post Doc

Alex Kazakov

PhD Student

Kamini Sehrawat

PhD Student

Arthur Berrou

PhD Student

Mousa Karayanni

PhD Student

Sapir Bashari

Ph.D. Student

Nimrod Agassi

M.Sc. Student

Alon Dotan

B.Sc. Student

Maciej Jankowski

Johannes Niediek

Ori Brook

Dina Farkas

Jonathan Rubin

Bshara Awwad

Yehuda Albeck

Shahar Mendelssohn

Mor Harpaz

Tamar Regev

Nadav Amir

Yaron Rotman

Yael Bitterman

Roi Kliper

Omer Bar-Yosef

Nevo Taaseh

Nachum Ulanovsky

Mor Nahum

Livia de Hoz

Liora Las

Leila Khouri

Itai Hershenhoren

Gal Chechik

Flora Antunes

Eyal Wigderson

Dana Barniv

Ayelet Shapira

Amit Yaron

Alon Fishbach

Tohar Sion Yarden

Gideon Rothschild

Sehrawat, K., Nelken, I.

Sound preferences in mice are sex-dependent

bioRxiv (2024)

Polterovich, A., Jankowski, M.M., Niediek, J., Kazakov, A., Nelken, I.

bioRxiv (2024)

Omri David Gilday, Benedikt Praegel, Ido Maor, Tav Cohen, Israel Nelken, Adi Mizrahi

Surround suppression in mouse auditory cortex underlies auditory edge detection

PLoS Computational Biology (2023)

Bshara Awwad, Maciej M. Jankowski, Ana Polterovich, Sapir Bashari, Israel Nelken

Extensive representation of sensory deviance in the responses to auditory gaps in unanesthetized rats

Current Biology (2023)

Maciej M. Jankowski, Ana Polterovich, Alex Kazakov, Johannes Niediek, Israel Nelken

An automated, low-latency environment for studying the neural basis of behavior in freely moving rats

BMC Biology (2023)

Maciej M. Jankowski , Mousa Karayanni, Mor Harpaz, Ana Polterovich , Israel Nelken

A Rapid Anterior Auditory Processing Stream Through the Insulo-Parietal Auditory Field in the Rat

bioRxiv (2023)

Rajendran VG, Tsdaka Y, Keung TY, Schnupp JWH, Nelken I.

Rats synchronize predictively to metronomes

iScience, in press (2023)

Tamar I Regev, Geffen Markusfeld, Leon Y Deouell, Israel Nelken

Context sensitivity across multiple time scales with a flexible frequency bandwidth

Cerebral Cortex 32 (1), 158-175 (2022)

Tohar S. Yarden, Adi Mizrahi, Israel Nelken

Context-Dependent Inhibitory Control of Stimulus-Specific Adaptation

Journal of Neuroscience. 42(23): 4629-4651 (2022)

Mousa Karayanni & Israel Nelken

Extrinsic rewards, intrinsic rewards, and non-optimal behavior

Journal of Computational Neuroscience volume 50, pages139–143 (2022)

Nadav Amir, Naftali Tishby, Israel Nelken

A simple model of the attentional blink and its modulation by mental training

PLOS Computational Biology, e1010398 (2022)

Lior Madmoni, Shir Tibor, Israel Nelken, Boaz Rafaely

The Effect of Partial Time-Frequency Masking of the Direct Sound on the Perception of Reverberant Speech

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 29, 2037-2047 (2021)

Mor Harpaz, Maciej M. Jankowski, Leila Khouri, Israel Nelken

Emergence of abstract sound representations in the ascending auditory system

Progress in Neurobiology, Volume 202, 102049, ISSN 0301-0082 (2021)

Israel Nelken

From neurons to behavior: the view from auditory cortex

Current Opinion in Physiology 18, 37-41 (2020)

Meng Wang, Xiang Liao, Ruijie Li, Shanshan Liang, Ran Ding, Jingcheng Li, Jianxiong Zhang, Wenjing He, Ke Liu, Junxia Pan, Zhikai Zhao, Tong Li, Kuan Zhang, Xingyi Li, Jing Lyu, Zhenqiao Zhou, Zsuzsanna Varga, Yuanyuan Mi, Yi Zhou, Junan Yan, Shaoqun Zeng, Jian K. Liu, Arthur Konnerth, Israel Nelken, Hongbo Jia & Xiaowei Chen

Single-neuron representation of learned complex sounds in the auditory cortex

Nature Communications 11 (1), 1-14 (2020)

Huang,Shun-Ho, Shmoel,Nava, Jankowski, Maciej M., Erez, Hadas, Sharon,Aviv, Abu-Salah,Wesal, Nelken,Israel, Weiss,Aryeh, Spira,Micha E.

Immunohistological and Ultrastructural Study of the Inflammatory Response to Perforated Polyimide Cortical Implants: Mechanisms Underlying Deterioration of Electrophysiological Recording Quality

Frontiers in neuroscience 14, 926 (2020)

Nadav Amir, Reut Suliman-Lavie, Maayan Tal, Sagiv Shifman, Naftali Tishby, Israel Nelken

Value-complexity tradeoff explains mouse navigational learning

PLOS Computational Biology 16(12): e1008497 (2020)

Oren Amsalem, James King, Michael Reimann, Srikanth Ramaswamy, Eilif Muller, Henry Markram, Israel Nelken, Idan Segev

Dense Computer Replica of Cortical Microcircuits Unravels Cellular Underpinnings of Auditory Surprise Response

bioRxiv (2020)

Kenneth W. Latimer, Dylan Barbera, Michael Sokoletsky, Bshara Awwad, Yonatan Katz, Israel Nelken, Ilan Lampl, Adriene L. Fairhall, Nicholas J. Priebe

Multiple Timescales Account for Adaptive Responses across Sensory Cortices

The Journal of Neuroscience (2020)

Bshara Awwad, Maciej M Jankowski, Israel Nelken

Synaptic Recruitment Enhances Gap Termination Responses in Auditory Cortex

Cerebral Cortex Volume 30, Issue 8, August 2020, Pages 4465–4480 (2020)

Alainde Cheveigné, Israel Nelken

Filters: When, Why, and How (Not) to Use Them

Neuron 102 (2), 280-293 (2019)

Carsten H. Tischbirek, Takahiro Noda, Manabu Tohmi, Antje Birkner, Israel Nelken, Arthur Konnerth

In Vivo Functional Mapping of a Cortical Column at Single-Neuron Resolution

Cell Reports 27 (5), 1319-1326. e5 (2019)

Busche, M A, Wegmann S, Dujardin S, Commins C, Schiantarelli J, Klickstein N, Kamath TV, Carlson GA, Nelken I, Hyman BT.

Tau impairs neural circuits, dominating amyloid-β effects, in Alzheimer models in vivo.

Nat Neurosci (2019)

Regev, TI, Nelken I, Deouell LY.

Evidence for Linear but Not Helical Automatic Representation of Pitch in the Human Auditory System.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Early Access p.1-17 (2019)

Kazakov, A, Nelken I.

Acoustic calibration in an echoic environment.

Journal of Neuroscience Methods Volume 309, Pages 60-70 (2018)

Atlan G, Terem A, Peretz-Rivlin N, Sehrawat K, Gonzales BJ, Pozner G, Tasaka G-i, Goll Y, Refaeli R, Zviran O, Lim BK, Groysman M, Goshen I, Mizrahi A, Nelken I, Citri A,

The claustrum supports resilience to distraction

Current Biology, Volume 28, Issue 17, 10 September 2018, Pages 2752-2762 (2018)

Polterovich A, Jankowski MM, Nelken I.

Deviance sensitivity in the auditory cortex of freely moving rats

PLoS One. 13(6):e0197678 (2018)

de Hoz, L, Gierej D, Lioudyno V, Jaworski J, Blazejczyk M, Cruces-Solís H, Beroun A, Lebitko T, Nikolaev T, Knapska E, Nelken I, Kaczmarek L.

Blocking c-Fos Expression Reveals the Role of Auditory Cortex Plasticity in Sound Frequency Discrimination Learning.

Cerebral Cortex, Volume 28, Issue 5, Pages 1645–1655 (2018)

Kazakov A, Jankowski MM, Nelken I.

Acoustic recordings data from an echoic environment and a toolkit for its analysis

Data Brief. 21:1451-1457 (2018)

Israel Nelken

Neural Population Coding of Natural Sounds in Non-flying Mammals

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (2017)

Yarden TS, Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation in a recurrent network model of primary auditory cortex

PLoS Comput Biol. 3(3):e1005437 (2017)

Li J, Liao X, Zhang J, Wang M, Yang N, Zhang J, Lv G, Li H, Lu J, Ding R, Li X, Guang Y, Yang Z, Qin H, Jin W, Zhang K, He C, Jia H, Zeng S, Hu Z, Nelken I, Chen X.

Primary Auditory Cortex is Required for Anticipatory Motor Response

Cereb Cortex; 27(6):3254-3271 (2017)

Keskin AD, Kekuš M, Adelsberger H, Neumann U, Shimshek DR, Song B, Zott B, Peng T, Förstl H, Staufenbiel M, Nelken I, Sakmann B, Konnerth A, Busche M A.

BACE inhibition-dependent repair of Alzheimer’s pathophysiology

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 114(32):8631-8636 (2017)

Itai Hershenhoren, Israel Nelken

Detection of Tones Masked by Fluctuating Noise in Rat Auditory Cortex

Cerebral Cortex 27 (11), 5130-5143 (2016)

Jonathan Rubin, Nahum Ulinovsky, Israel Nelken and Naftali Tishby

The Representation of Prediction Error in Auditory Cortex

PLoS Comput Biol 12(8) e1005058 (2016)

Wigderson, E, Nelken I, Yarom Y.

Early multisensory integration of self and source motion in the auditory system.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 113(29): 8308–8313 (2016)

Grimm, S, Escera C, Nelken I.

Early indices of deviance detection in humans and animal models.

Biological Psychology Volume 116, Pages 23-27 (2016)

Busche MA, Kekuš M, Adelsberger H, Noda T, Förstl H, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Rescue of long-range circuit dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease models

Nat Neurosci. 2015 Nov;18(11):1623-30. (2015)

Slomowitz E, Styr B, Vertkin I, Milshtein-Parush H, Nelken I, Slutsky M, Slutsky I.

Interplay between population firing stability and single neuron dynamics in hippocampal networks

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04378 (2015)

Khouri L, Nelken I.

Detecting the unexpected

Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2015 Dec;35:142-7. (2015)

Barniv D, Nelken I.

Auditory Streaming as an Online Classification Process with Evidence Accumulation

PLoS One. 2015 Dec 15;10(12):e0144788. (2015)

Moshitch D, Nelken I.

Using Tweedie distributions for fitting spike count data

J Neurosci Methods. 2014 Mar 30;225:13-28. (2014)

Grodzinsky Y., Nelken I.

The neural code that makes us human

Science. 2014 Feb 28;343(6174):978-9. (2014)

Itai Hershenhoren, Nevo Taaseh, Flora M. Antunes and Israel Nelken

Intracellular correlates of stimulus-specific adaptation

Journal of Neuroscience 26 February 2014, 34 (9) 3303-3319. (2014)

de Hoz L, Nelken I.

Frequency tuning in the behaving mouse: different bandwidths for discrimination and generalization

PLoS One. 2014 Mar 14;9(3):e91676. (2014)

Israel Nelken, Jennifer Bizley, Shihab A. Shamma, and Xiaoqin Wang

Auditory cortical processing in real-world listening: the auditory system going real

J Neurosci. 2014 Nov 12; 34(46): 15135–15138. (2014)

Nelken I, Bizley J, Shamma SA, Wang X.

Auditory cortical processing in real-world listening: the auditory system going real

J Neurosci. 2014 Nov 12;34(46):15135-8. (2014)

Xu X, Yu X, He J, Nelken I.

Across-ear stimulus-specific adaptation in the auditory cortex

Front Neural Circuits. 2014 Jul 30;8:89. (2014)

Moshitch D, Nelken I.

The Representation of Interaural Time Differences in High-Frequency Auditory Cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2016 Feb;26(2):656-68. (2014)

Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation and deviance detection in the auditory system: experiments and models

Biol Cybern. 2014 Oct;108(5):655-63. (2014)

Adi Mizrahi, Amos Shalev, Israel Nelken

Single neuron and population coding of natural sounds in auditory cortex

Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 24:103-110 (2014)

Eban, E., Rothschild, G., Mizrahi, A., Nelken, I., & Elidan, G.

Dynamic copula networks for modeling real-valued time series.

Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (pp. 247-255). PMLR (2013)

Nelken I, Yaron A, Polterovich A, Hershenhoren I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation beyond pure tones

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2013;787:411-8. (2013)

Eitan Globerson, and Israel Nelken

The neuro-pianist

Front Syst Neurosci. 2013; 7: 35. (2013)

Rothschild G, Cohen L, Mizrahi A, Nelken I.

Elevated correlations in neuronal ensembles of mouse auditory cortex following parturition

J Neurosci. 2013 Jul 31;33(31):12851-61 (2013)

Nelken I, de Cheveigné A.

An ear for statistics

Nat Neurosci. 2013 Apr;16(4):381-2. (2013)

Grienberger C, Adelsberger H, Stroh A, Milos RI, Garaschuk O, Schierloh A, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Sound-evoked network calcium transients in mouse auditory cortex in vivo

J Physiol. 2012 Feb 15;590(4):899-918. (2012)

Yaron A, Hershenhoren I, Nelken I.

Sensitivity to Complex Statistical Regularities in Rat Auditory Cortex

Neuron. 2012 Nov 8;76(3):603-15. (2012)

Nelken I.

Predictive information processing in the brain: the neural perspective

Int J Psychophysiol. 2012 Feb;83(2):253-5. (2012)

Chechik G, Nelken I.

Auditory abstraction from spectro-temporal features to coding auditory entities

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Nov 13;109(46):18968-73. (2012)

Taaseh N, Yaron A, Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation and deviance detection in the rat auditory cortex

PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23369. (2011)

Israel Nelken

Music and the auditory brain: where is the connection?

Front Hum Neurosci. 2011; 5: 106. (2011)

Chen X, Leischner U, Rochefort NL, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Functional mapping of single spines in cortical neurons in vivo

Nature. 2011 Jun 26;475(7357):501-5. (2011)

Zohar O, Shackleton TM, Nelken I, Palmer AR, Shamir M.

First spike latency code for interaural phase difference discrimination in the guinea pig inferior colliculus

J Neurosci. 2011 Jun 22;31(25):9192-204. (2011)

Antunes FM, Nelken I, Covey E, Malmierca MS.

Stimulus-specific adaptation in the auditory thalamus of the anesthetized rat

PLoS One. 2010 Nov 19;5(11):e14071. (2010)

Nahum M, Nelken I, Ahissar M.

Stimulus uncertainty and perceptual learning: similar principles govern auditory and visual learning

Vision Res. 2010 Feb 22;50(4):391-401. (2010)

Asadollahi A, Endler F, Nelken I, Wagner H.

Neural correlates of binaural masking level difference in the inferior colliculus of the barn owl (Tyto alba)

Eur J Neurosci. 2010 Aug;32(4):606-18. (2010)

Rothschild G, Nelken I, Mizrahi A.

Functional organization and population dynamics in the mouse primary auditory cortex

Nat Neurosci. 2010 Mar;13(3):353-60. (2010)

Nelken I.

Inhibitory plasticity in auditory cortex

Neuron. 2009 Jun 11;62(5):605-7. (2009)

Andrew J King, Israel Nelken

Unraveling the principles of auditory cortical processing: can we learn from the visual system?

Nature Neuroscience volume 12, pages 698–701 (2009) (2009)

Merav Ahissar , Mor Nahum , Israel Nelken and Shaul Hochstein

Reverse hierarchies and sensory learning

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (2009)

Winkler I, Denham SL, Nelken I.

Modeling the auditory scene: predictive regularity representations and perceptual objects

Trends Cogn Sci. 2009 Dec;13(12):532-40. (2009)

Y. Bitterman, R. Mukamel, R. Malach, I. Fried & I. Nelken

Ultra-fine frequency tuning revealed in single neurons of human auditory cortex

Nature volume 451, pages 197–201 (10 January 2008) (2008)

Yuval-Greenberg S, Tomer O, Keren AS, Nelken I, Deouell LY.

Transient induced gamma-band response in EEG as a manifestation of miniature saccades

Neuron. 2008 May 8;58(3):429-41. (2008)

Gordon N, Shackleton TM, Palmer AR, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in the inferior colliculus to binaural disparities: Insights from the use of Fisher information and mutual information

J Neurosci Methods. 2008 Apr 30;169(2):391-404. (2008)

Nelken I, Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Ahmed B, King AJ, Schnupp JW.

Responses of auditory cortex to complex stimuli: functional organization revealed using intrinsic optical signals

J Neurophysiol. 2008 Apr;99(4):1928-41. (2008)

Israel Nelken and Omer Bar-Yosef

Neurons and objects: the case of auditory cortex

Front Neurosci. 2008 Jul; 2(1): 107–113. (2008)

Nahum M, Nelken I, Ahissar M.

Low-level information and high-level perception: the case of speech in noise

PLoS Biol. 2008 May 20;6(5):e126. (2008)

Las L, Shapira AH, Nelken I.

Functional gradients of auditory sensitivity along the anterior ectosylvian sulcus of the cat

J Neurosci. 2008 Apr 2;28(14):3657-67. (2008)

Parush N, Arkadir D, Nevet A, Morris G, Tishby N, Nelken I, Bergman H.

Encoding by response duration in the basal ganglia

J Neurophysiol. 2008 Dec;100(6):3244-52. (2008)

Omer Bar-Yosef and Israel Nelken

The Effects of Background Noise on the Neural Responses to Natural Sounds in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex

Front Comput Neurosci. 2007; 1: 3. (2007)

Alex Loebel, Israel Nelken, and Misha Tsodyks

Processing of sounds by population spikes in a model of primary auditory cortex

Front Neurosci. 2007 Nov; 1(1): 197–209. (2007)

Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Bajo VM, Nelken I, King AJ.

Physiological and anatomical evidence for multisensory interactions in auditory cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2007 Sep;17(9):2172-89. (2007)

Israel Nelken, Nachum Ulanovsky

Mismatch negativity and stimulus-specific adaptation in animal models

Journal of Psychophysiology 21(3-4):214-223 (2007)

Nelken I, Chechik G.

Information theory in auditory research

Hear Res. 2007 Jul;229(1-2):94-105. (2007)

Moshitch D, Las L, Ulanovsky N, Bar-Yosef O, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) to pure tones in the halothane-anesthetized cat

J Neurophysiol. 2006 Jun;95(6):3756-69. (2006)

Chechik G, Anderson MJ, Bar-Yosef O, Young ED, Tishby N, Nelken I.

Reduction of information redundancy in the ascending auditory pathway

Neuron. 2006 Aug 3;51(3):359-68. (2006)

Israel Nelken, Merav Ahissar

High-Level and Low-Level Processing in the Auditory System: The Role of Primary Auditory Cortex

IOS Press (2006)

Liora Las, Edward A. Stern and Israel Nelken

Representation of tone in fluctuating maskers in the ascending auditory system

Journal of Neuroscience 9 February 2005, 25 (6) 1503-1513; (2005)

Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Nelken I, King AJ.

Functional Organization of Ferret Auditory Cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2005 Oct;15(10):1637-53. (2005)

Nelken I, Chechik G, Mrsic-Flogel TD, King AJ, Schnupp JW.

Encoding stimulus information by spike numbers and mean response time in primary auditory cortex

J Comput Neurosci. 2005 Oct;19(2):199-221. (2005)

Nelken I.

Processing of complex stimuli and natural scenes in the auditory cortex

Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2004 Aug;14(4):474-80. (2004)

Nachum Ulanovsky, Liora Las, Dina Farkas and Israel Nelken

Multiple time scales of adaptation in auditory cortex neurons

Journal of Neuroscience 17 November 2004, 24 (46) 10440-10453; (2004)

Nelken I, Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Ahmed B, Schnupp JW, King AJ.

Large-scale organization of ferret auditory cortex revealed using continuous acquisition of intrinsic optical signals

J Neurophysiol. 2004 Oct;92(4):2574-88. (2004)

Griffiths TD, Warren JD, Scott SK, Nelken I, King AJ.

Cortical processing of complex sound: a way forward?

Trends Neurosci. 2004 Apr;27(4):181-5. (2004)

Israel Nelken, Nachum Ulanovsky, Liora Las, Omer Bar-Yosef, Michael Anderson, Gal Chechik, Naftali Tishby, Eric D. Young

Transformation of stimulus representation in the ascending auditory system

Auditory Signal Processing pp 264-273 (2003)

Ulanovsky N, Las L, Nelken I.

Processing of low-probability sounds by cortical neurons

Nat Neurosci. 2003 Apr;6(4):391-8. (2003)

Israel Nelken, Alon FishbachLiora LasNachum UlanovskyDina Farkas

Primary auditory cortex of cats: feature detection or something else?

Biological Cybernetics November 2003, Volume 89, Issue 5, pp 397–406 (2003)

Fishbach A, Yeshurun Y, Nelken I.

Neural model for physiological responses to frequency and amplitude transitions uncovers topographical order in the auditory cortex

J Neurophysiol. 2003 Dec;90(6):3663-78. (2003)

Bar-Yosef O, Rotman Y, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in cat primary auditory cortex to bird chirps: effects of temporal and spectral context

J Neurosci. 2002 Oct 1;22(19):8619-32. (2002)

Amitay S, Ahissar M, Nelken I.

Auditory processing deficits in reading disabled adults.

J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 2002 Sep;3(3):302-20. (2002)

Jacobson G, Poganiatz I, Nelken I.

Synthesizing spatially complex sound in virtual space: an accurate offline algorithm

J Neurosci Methods. 2001 Mar 30;106(1):29-38. (2001)

Iris Poganiatz, Israel Nelken, and Hermann Wagner

Sound-localization experiments with barn owls in virtual space: influence of interaural time difference on head-turning behavior

Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 2(1):1-21 (2001)

Omer Bar-Yosef, Yaron Rotman and Israel Nelken

Relating cluster and population responses to natural sounds and tonal stimuli in cat primary auditory cortex

Journal of Neuroscience 1 October 2002, 22 (19) 8619-8632; (2001)

S. Mendelson and I. Nelken

Recurrence methods in the analysis of learning processes

Neural Computation Volume 13 | Issue 8 | August 2001 p.1839-1861 (2001)

Fishbach A, Nelken I, Yeshurun Y.

Auditory edge detection: a neural model for physiological and psychoacoustical responses to amplitude transients

J Neurophysiol. 2001 Jun;85(6):2303-23. (2001)

Daniel Gill, Lidror Troyansky, Israel Nelken

Auditory localization using direction-dependent spectral information

Neurocomputing 32-33:767-773 (2000)

Spirou GA, Davis KA, Nelken I, Young ED.

Spectral integration by type II interneurons in dorsal cochlear nucleus

J Neurophysiol. 1999 Aug;82(2):648-63. (1999)

elken I, Rotman Y, Bar Yosef O.

Responses of auditory-cortex neurons to structural features of natural sounds

Nature. 1999 Jan 14;397(6715):154-7. (1999)

Bergman H, Raz A, Feingold A, Nini A, Nelken I, Hansel D, Ben-Pazi H, Reches A.

Physiology of MPTP tremor

Mov Disord. 1998;13 Suppl 3:29-34. (1998)

Nelken I, Bar Yosef O, Young ED. Palmer, AR, Rees A, Summerfield AQ, Meddis R.

Responses of field AES neurons to virtual space stimuli

Psychophysical and Physiological Advances in Hearing. :504-512. (1997)

Young ED, Rice JJ, Spirou GA, Nelken I, Conley RA

Head-related transfer functions in cat: Neural representation and the effects of pinna movement

Binaural and Spatial Hearing in Real and Virtual Environments. :475-497. (1997)

Eric D. YoungKevin A. DavisIsrael Nelken

Synaptic relationships in the granule-cell associated systems in dorsal cochlear nucleus

Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System pp 155-166 (1997)

Israel NelkenYaron RotmanOmer Bar Yosef

Specializations of the auditory system for the analysis of natural sounds

Central Auditory Processing and Neural Modeling pp 43-53 (1997)

Israel Nelken, and Eric D. Young

Linear and nonlinear spectral integration in type IV neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. II. Predicting responses with the use of nonlinear models

Journal of Neurophysiology 78(2):790-9. (1997)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Linear and nonlinear spectral integration in type IV neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. I. Regions of linear interaction

J Neurophysiol. 1997 Aug;78(2):790-9. (1997)

Eric D. YoungIsrael Nelken

Interneurons which shape response properties in dorsal cochelar nucleus

Central Auditory Processing and Neural Modeling pp 101-115 (1997)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Why do cats need a dorsal cochlear nucleus?

J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 1996;7(3):199-220. (1996)

Nelken I, Young ED. Manley, GA, Klump GM, Koppl C, Fastl H, Oeckinghaus H.

The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN): Mechanisms and function

Advances in Hearing Research. :264-274. (1995)

Young ED1, Nelken I, Conley RA.

Somatosensory effects on neurons in dorsal cochlear nucleus

J Neurophysiol. 1995 Feb;73(2):743-65. (1995)

Vaadia E, Aertsen A, Nelken I.

‘Dynamics of neuronal interactions’ cannot be explained by ‘neuronal transients’

Proc Biol Sci. 1995 Sep 22;261(1362):407-10. (1995)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Two separate inhibitory mechanisms shape the responses of dorsal cochlear nucleus type IV units to narrowband and wideband stimuli

J Neurophysiol. 1994 Jun;71(6):2446-62. (1994)

Nelken I, Prut Y, Vaadia E, Abeles M.

Population responses to multifrequency sounds in the cat auditory cortex: one- and two-parameter families of sounds

Hear Res. 1994 Jan;72(1-2):206-22. (1994)

Nelken I, Prut Y, Vaadia E, Abeles M.

In search of the best stimulus: an optimization procedure for finding efficient stimuli in the cat auditory cortex

Hear Res. 1994 Jan;72(1-2):237-53. (1994)

Israel Nelken

A probabilistic approach to the analysis of propagation delays in large cortical axonal trees

Information Processing in the Cortex pp 29-49 (1992)

Aertsen A, Vaadia E, Abeles M, Ahissar E, Bergman H, Karmon B, Lavner Y, Margalit E, Nelken I, Rotter S.

Neural interactions in the frontal cortex of a behaving monkey: signs of dependence on stimulus context and behavioral state

J Hirnforsch. 1991;32(6):735-43. (1991)

Nelken I, Vaadia E.

A sensitive estimator for crosscorrelograms

Biol Cybern. 1990;64(1):51-60. (1990)

Nelken I.

Analysis of the activity of single neurons in stochastic settings

Biol Cybern. 1988;59(3):201-15. (1988)

Nelken I, Yaari Y.

The role of interstitial potassium in the generation of low-calcium hippocampal seizures

Isr J Med Sci. 1987 Jan-Feb;23(1-2):124-31. (1987)

Honors:
1985 The A. Heller prize for excellence in Research Thesis
1991 Fullbright fellowship
1994 The Bergmann Memorial Research Grant (concurrently with BSF grant No. 93-00057)
1999 Research prize of the Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School.
2000 Bernard Katz Lecturer for the year 2000
2008 Michael Bruno prize, administered by Yad-Hanadiv foundation
2015 Rector prize for excellence in research and teaching
2016 The Michael Landau prize for the Sciences and Research
2021 Humboldt research prize

Israel Nelken

Professor

Email: israel.nelken@mail.huji.ac.il

Phone: +972-2-6584229

Fax: +972-2-6586077

Israel Nelken

Address: The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences
The Suzanne and Charles Goodman Brain Sciences Building,
Level 2, Room 1207, Edmond J. Safra Campus,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 9190401

Milton and Brindell Gottlieb Chair in Brain Science

Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology

We study the auditory system using a combination of behavioral, electrophysiological and imaging techniques, mostly in animal models but also in humans.

Sounds and the Brain

Here is a sample of our recent and ongoing projects:

Context-dependent sound representations in auditory cortex >>

Early sound exposure and sound preferences in mice >>

Sound-guided behavior and neural dynamics in auditory cortex of freely-moving rats >>

Representation of actions in auditory cortex: insights from reinforcement learning and deep neural networks >>

People

Dina Moshitch

Lab Manager

Lital Summer

Lab administrative officer

Samira Souffi

Post Doc

Moran Aharoni

Post Doc

Alex Kazakov

PhD Student

Kamini Sehrawat

PhD Student

Arthur Berrou

PhD Student

Mousa Karayanni

PhD Student

Sapir Bashari

Ph.D. Student

Nimrod Agassi

M.Sc. Student

Alon Dotan

B.Sc. Student

Maciej Jankowski

Johannes Niediek

Ori Brook

Dina Farkas

Jonathan Rubin

Bshara Awwad

Yehuda Albeck

Shahar Mendelssohn

Mor Harpaz

Tamar Regev

Nadav Amir

Yaron Rotman

Yael Bitterman

Roi Kliper

Omer Bar-Yosef

Nevo Taaseh

Nachum Ulanovsky

Mor Nahum

Livia de Hoz

Liora Las

Leila Khouri

Itai Hershenhoren

Gal Chechik

Flora Antunes

Eyal Wigderson

Dana Barniv

Ayelet Shapira

Amit Yaron

Alon Fishbach

Tohar Sion Yarden

Gideon Rothschild

Publications

Sehrawat, K., Nelken, I.

Sound preferences in mice are sex-dependent

bioRxiv (2024)

Polterovich, A., Jankowski, M.M., Niediek, J., Kazakov, A., Nelken, I.

bioRxiv (2024)

Omri David Gilday, Benedikt Praegel, Ido Maor, Tav Cohen, Israel Nelken, Adi Mizrahi

Surround suppression in mouse auditory cortex underlies auditory edge detection

PLoS Computational Biology (2023)

Bshara Awwad, Maciej M. Jankowski, Ana Polterovich, Sapir Bashari, Israel Nelken

Extensive representation of sensory deviance in the responses to auditory gaps in unanesthetized rats

Current Biology (2023)

Maciej M. Jankowski, Ana Polterovich, Alex Kazakov, Johannes Niediek, Israel Nelken

An automated, low-latency environment for studying the neural basis of behavior in freely moving rats

BMC Biology (2023)

Maciej M. Jankowski , Mousa Karayanni, Mor Harpaz, Ana Polterovich , Israel Nelken

A Rapid Anterior Auditory Processing Stream Through the Insulo-Parietal Auditory Field in the Rat

bioRxiv (2023)

Rajendran VG, Tsdaka Y, Keung TY, Schnupp JWH, Nelken I.

Rats synchronize predictively to metronomes

iScience, in press (2023)

Tamar I Regev, Geffen Markusfeld, Leon Y Deouell, Israel Nelken

Context sensitivity across multiple time scales with a flexible frequency bandwidth

Cerebral Cortex 32 (1), 158-175 (2022)

Tohar S. Yarden, Adi Mizrahi, Israel Nelken

Context-Dependent Inhibitory Control of Stimulus-Specific Adaptation

Journal of Neuroscience. 42(23): 4629-4651 (2022)

Mousa Karayanni & Israel Nelken

Extrinsic rewards, intrinsic rewards, and non-optimal behavior

Journal of Computational Neuroscience volume 50, pages139–143 (2022)

Nadav Amir, Naftali Tishby, Israel Nelken

A simple model of the attentional blink and its modulation by mental training

PLOS Computational Biology, e1010398 (2022)

Lior Madmoni, Shir Tibor, Israel Nelken, Boaz Rafaely

The Effect of Partial Time-Frequency Masking of the Direct Sound on the Perception of Reverberant Speech

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 29, 2037-2047 (2021)

Mor Harpaz, Maciej M. Jankowski, Leila Khouri, Israel Nelken

Emergence of abstract sound representations in the ascending auditory system

Progress in Neurobiology, Volume 202, 102049, ISSN 0301-0082 (2021)

Israel Nelken

From neurons to behavior: the view from auditory cortex

Current Opinion in Physiology 18, 37-41 (2020)

Single-neuron representation of learned complex sounds in the auditory cortex

Nature Communications 11 (1), 1-14 (2020)

Huang,Shun-Ho, Shmoel,Nava, Jankowski, Maciej M., Erez, Hadas, Sharon,Aviv, Abu-Salah,Wesal, Nelken,Israel, Weiss,Aryeh, Spira,Micha E.

Immunohistological and Ultrastructural Study of the Inflammatory Response to Perforated Polyimide Cortical Implants: Mechanisms Underlying Deterioration of Electrophysiological Recording Quality

Frontiers in neuroscience 14, 926 (2020)

Nadav Amir, Reut Suliman-Lavie, Maayan Tal, Sagiv Shifman, Naftali Tishby, Israel Nelken

Value-complexity tradeoff explains mouse navigational learning

PLOS Computational Biology 16(12): e1008497 (2020)

Oren Amsalem, James King, Michael Reimann, Srikanth Ramaswamy, Eilif Muller, Henry Markram, Israel Nelken, Idan Segev

Dense Computer Replica of Cortical Microcircuits Unravels Cellular Underpinnings of Auditory Surprise Response

bioRxiv (2020)

Kenneth W. Latimer, Dylan Barbera, Michael Sokoletsky, Bshara Awwad, Yonatan Katz, Israel Nelken, Ilan Lampl, Adriene L. Fairhall, Nicholas J. Priebe

Multiple Timescales Account for Adaptive Responses across Sensory Cortices

The Journal of Neuroscience (2020)

Bshara Awwad, Maciej M Jankowski, Israel Nelken

Synaptic Recruitment Enhances Gap Termination Responses in Auditory Cortex

Cerebral Cortex Volume 30, Issue 8, August 2020, Pages 4465–4480 (2020)

Alainde Cheveigné, Israel Nelken

Filters: When, Why, and How (Not) to Use Them

Neuron 102 (2), 280-293 (2019)

Carsten H. Tischbirek, Takahiro Noda, Manabu Tohmi, Antje Birkner, Israel Nelken, Arthur Konnerth

In Vivo Functional Mapping of a Cortical Column at Single-Neuron Resolution

Cell Reports 27 (5), 1319-1326. e5 (2019)

Busche, M A, Wegmann S, Dujardin S, Commins C, Schiantarelli J, Klickstein N, Kamath TV, Carlson GA, Nelken I, Hyman BT.

Tau impairs neural circuits, dominating amyloid-β effects, in Alzheimer models in vivo.

Nat Neurosci (2019)

Regev, TI, Nelken I, Deouell LY.

Evidence for Linear but Not Helical Automatic Representation of Pitch in the Human Auditory System.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Early Access p.1-17 (2019)

Kazakov, A, Nelken I.

Acoustic calibration in an echoic environment.

Journal of Neuroscience Methods Volume 309, Pages 60-70 (2018)

Atlan G, Terem A, Peretz-Rivlin N, Sehrawat K, Gonzales BJ, Pozner G, Tasaka G-i, Goll Y, Refaeli R, Zviran O, Lim BK, Groysman M, Goshen I, Mizrahi A, Nelken I, Citri A,

The claustrum supports resilience to distraction

Current Biology, Volume 28, Issue 17, 10 September 2018, Pages 2752-2762 (2018)

Polterovich A, Jankowski MM, Nelken I.

Deviance sensitivity in the auditory cortex of freely moving rats

PLoS One. 13(6):e0197678 (2018)

de Hoz, L, Gierej D, Lioudyno V, Jaworski J, Blazejczyk M, Cruces-Solís H, Beroun A, Lebitko T, Nikolaev T, Knapska E, Nelken I, Kaczmarek L.

Blocking c-Fos Expression Reveals the Role of Auditory Cortex Plasticity in Sound Frequency Discrimination Learning.

Cerebral Cortex, Volume 28, Issue 5, Pages 1645–1655 (2018)

Kazakov A, Jankowski MM, Nelken I.

Acoustic recordings data from an echoic environment and a toolkit for its analysis

Data Brief. 21:1451-1457 (2018)

Israel Nelken

Neural Population Coding of Natural Sounds in Non-flying Mammals

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (2017)

Yarden TS, Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation in a recurrent network model of primary auditory cortex

PLoS Comput Biol. 3(3):e1005437 (2017)

Li J, Liao X, Zhang J, Wang M, Yang N, Zhang J, Lv G, Li H, Lu J, Ding R, Li X, Guang Y, Yang Z, Qin H, Jin W, Zhang K, He C, Jia H, Zeng S, Hu Z, Nelken I, Chen X.

Primary Auditory Cortex is Required for Anticipatory Motor Response

Cereb Cortex; 27(6):3254-3271 (2017)

Keskin AD, Kekuš M, Adelsberger H, Neumann U, Shimshek DR, Song B, Zott B, Peng T, Förstl H, Staufenbiel M, Nelken I, Sakmann B, Konnerth A, Busche M A.

BACE inhibition-dependent repair of Alzheimer’s pathophysiology

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 114(32):8631-8636 (2017)

Itai Hershenhoren, Israel Nelken

Detection of Tones Masked by Fluctuating Noise in Rat Auditory Cortex

Cerebral Cortex 27 (11), 5130-5143 (2016)

Jonathan Rubin, Nahum Ulinovsky, Israel Nelken and Naftali Tishby

The Representation of Prediction Error in Auditory Cortex

PLoS Comput Biol 12(8) e1005058 (2016)

Wigderson, E, Nelken I, Yarom Y.

Early multisensory integration of self and source motion in the auditory system.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 113(29): 8308–8313 (2016)

Grimm, S, Escera C, Nelken I.

Early indices of deviance detection in humans and animal models.

Biological Psychology Volume 116, Pages 23-27 (2016)

Busche MA, Kekuš M, Adelsberger H, Noda T, Förstl H, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Rescue of long-range circuit dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease models

Nat Neurosci. 2015 Nov;18(11):1623-30. (2015)

Slomowitz E, Styr B, Vertkin I, Milshtein-Parush H, Nelken I, Slutsky M, Slutsky I.

Interplay between population firing stability and single neuron dynamics in hippocampal networks

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04378 (2015)

Khouri L, Nelken I.

Detecting the unexpected

Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2015 Dec;35:142-7. (2015)

Barniv D, Nelken I.

Auditory Streaming as an Online Classification Process with Evidence Accumulation

PLoS One. 2015 Dec 15;10(12):e0144788. (2015)

Moshitch D, Nelken I.

Using Tweedie distributions for fitting spike count data

J Neurosci Methods. 2014 Mar 30;225:13-28. (2014)

Grodzinsky Y., Nelken I.

The neural code that makes us human

Science. 2014 Feb 28;343(6174):978-9. (2014)

Itai Hershenhoren, Nevo Taaseh, Flora M. Antunes and Israel Nelken

Intracellular correlates of stimulus-specific adaptation

Journal of Neuroscience 26 February 2014, 34 (9) 3303-3319. (2014)

de Hoz L, Nelken I.

Frequency tuning in the behaving mouse: different bandwidths for discrimination and generalization

PLoS One. 2014 Mar 14;9(3):e91676. (2014)

Israel Nelken, Jennifer Bizley, Shihab A. Shamma, and Xiaoqin Wang

Auditory cortical processing in real-world listening: the auditory system going real

J Neurosci. 2014 Nov 12; 34(46): 15135–15138. (2014)

Nelken I, Bizley J, Shamma SA, Wang X.

Auditory cortical processing in real-world listening: the auditory system going real

J Neurosci. 2014 Nov 12;34(46):15135-8. (2014)

Xu X, Yu X, He J, Nelken I.

Across-ear stimulus-specific adaptation in the auditory cortex

Front Neural Circuits. 2014 Jul 30;8:89. (2014)

Moshitch D, Nelken I.

The Representation of Interaural Time Differences in High-Frequency Auditory Cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2016 Feb;26(2):656-68. (2014)

Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation and deviance detection in the auditory system: experiments and models

Biol Cybern. 2014 Oct;108(5):655-63. (2014)

Adi Mizrahi, Amos Shalev, Israel Nelken

Single neuron and population coding of natural sounds in auditory cortex

Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 24:103-110 (2014)

Eban, E., Rothschild, G., Mizrahi, A., Nelken, I., & Elidan, G.

Dynamic copula networks for modeling real-valued time series.

Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (pp. 247-255). PMLR (2013)

Nelken I, Yaron A, Polterovich A, Hershenhoren I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation beyond pure tones

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2013;787:411-8. (2013)

Eitan Globerson, and Israel Nelken

The neuro-pianist

Front Syst Neurosci. 2013; 7: 35. (2013)

Rothschild G, Cohen L, Mizrahi A, Nelken I.

Elevated correlations in neuronal ensembles of mouse auditory cortex following parturition

J Neurosci. 2013 Jul 31;33(31):12851-61 (2013)

Nelken I, de Cheveigné A.

An ear for statistics

Nat Neurosci. 2013 Apr;16(4):381-2. (2013)

Grienberger C, Adelsberger H, Stroh A, Milos RI, Garaschuk O, Schierloh A, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Sound-evoked network calcium transients in mouse auditory cortex in vivo

J Physiol. 2012 Feb 15;590(4):899-918. (2012)

Yaron A, Hershenhoren I, Nelken I.

Sensitivity to Complex Statistical Regularities in Rat Auditory Cortex

Neuron. 2012 Nov 8;76(3):603-15. (2012)

Nelken I.

Predictive information processing in the brain: the neural perspective

Int J Psychophysiol. 2012 Feb;83(2):253-5. (2012)

Chechik G, Nelken I.

Auditory abstraction from spectro-temporal features to coding auditory entities

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Nov 13;109(46):18968-73. (2012)

Taaseh N, Yaron A, Nelken I.

Stimulus-specific adaptation and deviance detection in the rat auditory cortex

PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23369. (2011)

Israel Nelken

Music and the auditory brain: where is the connection?

Front Hum Neurosci. 2011; 5: 106. (2011)

Chen X, Leischner U, Rochefort NL, Nelken I, Konnerth A.

Functional mapping of single spines in cortical neurons in vivo

Nature. 2011 Jun 26;475(7357):501-5. (2011)

Zohar O, Shackleton TM, Nelken I, Palmer AR, Shamir M.

First spike latency code for interaural phase difference discrimination in the guinea pig inferior colliculus

J Neurosci. 2011 Jun 22;31(25):9192-204. (2011)

Antunes FM, Nelken I, Covey E, Malmierca MS.

Stimulus-specific adaptation in the auditory thalamus of the anesthetized rat

PLoS One. 2010 Nov 19;5(11):e14071. (2010)

Nahum M, Nelken I, Ahissar M.

Stimulus uncertainty and perceptual learning: similar principles govern auditory and visual learning

Vision Res. 2010 Feb 22;50(4):391-401. (2010)

Asadollahi A, Endler F, Nelken I, Wagner H.

Neural correlates of binaural masking level difference in the inferior colliculus of the barn owl (Tyto alba)

Eur J Neurosci. 2010 Aug;32(4):606-18. (2010)

Rothschild G, Nelken I, Mizrahi A.

Functional organization and population dynamics in the mouse primary auditory cortex

Nat Neurosci. 2010 Mar;13(3):353-60. (2010)

Nelken I.

Inhibitory plasticity in auditory cortex

Neuron. 2009 Jun 11;62(5):605-7. (2009)

Andrew J King, Israel Nelken

Unraveling the principles of auditory cortical processing: can we learn from the visual system?

Nature Neuroscience volume 12, pages 698–701 (2009) (2009)

Merav Ahissar , Mor Nahum , Israel Nelken and Shaul Hochstein

Reverse hierarchies and sensory learning

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (2009)

Winkler I, Denham SL, Nelken I.

Modeling the auditory scene: predictive regularity representations and perceptual objects

Trends Cogn Sci. 2009 Dec;13(12):532-40. (2009)

Y. Bitterman, R. Mukamel, R. Malach, I. Fried & I. Nelken

Ultra-fine frequency tuning revealed in single neurons of human auditory cortex

Nature volume 451, pages 197–201 (10 January 2008) (2008)

Yuval-Greenberg S, Tomer O, Keren AS, Nelken I, Deouell LY.

Transient induced gamma-band response in EEG as a manifestation of miniature saccades

Neuron. 2008 May 8;58(3):429-41. (2008)

Gordon N, Shackleton TM, Palmer AR, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in the inferior colliculus to binaural disparities: Insights from the use of Fisher information and mutual information

J Neurosci Methods. 2008 Apr 30;169(2):391-404. (2008)

Nelken I, Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Ahmed B, King AJ, Schnupp JW.

Responses of auditory cortex to complex stimuli: functional organization revealed using intrinsic optical signals

J Neurophysiol. 2008 Apr;99(4):1928-41. (2008)

Israel Nelken and Omer Bar-Yosef

Neurons and objects: the case of auditory cortex

Front Neurosci. 2008 Jul; 2(1): 107–113. (2008)

Nahum M, Nelken I, Ahissar M.

Low-level information and high-level perception: the case of speech in noise

PLoS Biol. 2008 May 20;6(5):e126. (2008)

Las L, Shapira AH, Nelken I.

Functional gradients of auditory sensitivity along the anterior ectosylvian sulcus of the cat

J Neurosci. 2008 Apr 2;28(14):3657-67. (2008)

Parush N, Arkadir D, Nevet A, Morris G, Tishby N, Nelken I, Bergman H.

Encoding by response duration in the basal ganglia

J Neurophysiol. 2008 Dec;100(6):3244-52. (2008)

Omer Bar-Yosef and Israel Nelken

The Effects of Background Noise on the Neural Responses to Natural Sounds in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex

Front Comput Neurosci. 2007; 1: 3. (2007)

Alex Loebel, Israel Nelken, and Misha Tsodyks

Processing of sounds by population spikes in a model of primary auditory cortex

Front Neurosci. 2007 Nov; 1(1): 197–209. (2007)

Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Bajo VM, Nelken I, King AJ.

Physiological and anatomical evidence for multisensory interactions in auditory cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2007 Sep;17(9):2172-89. (2007)

Israel Nelken, Nachum Ulanovsky

Mismatch negativity and stimulus-specific adaptation in animal models

Journal of Psychophysiology 21(3-4):214-223 (2007)

Nelken I, Chechik G.

Information theory in auditory research

Hear Res. 2007 Jul;229(1-2):94-105. (2007)

Moshitch D, Las L, Ulanovsky N, Bar-Yosef O, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) to pure tones in the halothane-anesthetized cat

J Neurophysiol. 2006 Jun;95(6):3756-69. (2006)

Chechik G, Anderson MJ, Bar-Yosef O, Young ED, Tishby N, Nelken I.

Reduction of information redundancy in the ascending auditory pathway

Neuron. 2006 Aug 3;51(3):359-68. (2006)

Israel Nelken, Merav Ahissar

High-Level and Low-Level Processing in the Auditory System: The Role of Primary Auditory Cortex

IOS Press (2006)

Liora Las, Edward A. Stern and Israel Nelken

Representation of tone in fluctuating maskers in the ascending auditory system

Journal of Neuroscience 9 February 2005, 25 (6) 1503-1513; (2005)

Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Nelken I, King AJ.

Functional Organization of Ferret Auditory Cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2005 Oct;15(10):1637-53. (2005)

Nelken I, Chechik G, Mrsic-Flogel TD, King AJ, Schnupp JW.

Encoding stimulus information by spike numbers and mean response time in primary auditory cortex

J Comput Neurosci. 2005 Oct;19(2):199-221. (2005)

Nelken I.

Processing of complex stimuli and natural scenes in the auditory cortex

Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2004 Aug;14(4):474-80. (2004)

Nachum Ulanovsky, Liora Las, Dina Farkas and Israel Nelken

Multiple time scales of adaptation in auditory cortex neurons

Journal of Neuroscience 17 November 2004, 24 (46) 10440-10453; (2004)

Nelken I, Bizley JK, Nodal FR, Ahmed B, Schnupp JW, King AJ.

Large-scale organization of ferret auditory cortex revealed using continuous acquisition of intrinsic optical signals

J Neurophysiol. 2004 Oct;92(4):2574-88. (2004)

Griffiths TD, Warren JD, Scott SK, Nelken I, King AJ.

Cortical processing of complex sound: a way forward?

Trends Neurosci. 2004 Apr;27(4):181-5. (2004)

Israel Nelken, Nachum Ulanovsky, Liora Las, Omer Bar-Yosef, Michael Anderson, Gal Chechik, Naftali Tishby, Eric D. Young

Transformation of stimulus representation in the ascending auditory system

Auditory Signal Processing pp 264-273 (2003)

Ulanovsky N, Las L, Nelken I.

Processing of low-probability sounds by cortical neurons

Nat Neurosci. 2003 Apr;6(4):391-8. (2003)

Israel Nelken, Alon FishbachLiora LasNachum UlanovskyDina Farkas

Primary auditory cortex of cats: feature detection or something else?

Biological Cybernetics November 2003, Volume 89, Issue 5, pp 397–406 (2003)

Fishbach A, Yeshurun Y, Nelken I.

Neural model for physiological responses to frequency and amplitude transitions uncovers topographical order in the auditory cortex

J Neurophysiol. 2003 Dec;90(6):3663-78. (2003)

Bar-Yosef O, Rotman Y, Nelken I.

Responses of neurons in cat primary auditory cortex to bird chirps: effects of temporal and spectral context

J Neurosci. 2002 Oct 1;22(19):8619-32. (2002)

Amitay S, Ahissar M, Nelken I.

Auditory processing deficits in reading disabled adults.

J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 2002 Sep;3(3):302-20. (2002)

Jacobson G, Poganiatz I, Nelken I.

Synthesizing spatially complex sound in virtual space: an accurate offline algorithm

J Neurosci Methods. 2001 Mar 30;106(1):29-38. (2001)

Iris Poganiatz, Israel Nelken, and Hermann Wagner

Sound-localization experiments with barn owls in virtual space: influence of interaural time difference on head-turning behavior

Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 2(1):1-21 (2001)

Omer Bar-Yosef, Yaron Rotman and Israel Nelken

Relating cluster and population responses to natural sounds and tonal stimuli in cat primary auditory cortex

Journal of Neuroscience 1 October 2002, 22 (19) 8619-8632; (2001)

S. Mendelson and I. Nelken

Recurrence methods in the analysis of learning processes

Neural Computation Volume 13 | Issue 8 | August 2001 p.1839-1861 (2001)

Fishbach A, Nelken I, Yeshurun Y.

Auditory edge detection: a neural model for physiological and psychoacoustical responses to amplitude transients

J Neurophysiol. 2001 Jun;85(6):2303-23. (2001)

Daniel Gill, Lidror Troyansky, Israel Nelken

Auditory localization using direction-dependent spectral information

Neurocomputing 32-33:767-773 (2000)

Spirou GA, Davis KA, Nelken I, Young ED.

Spectral integration by type II interneurons in dorsal cochlear nucleus

J Neurophysiol. 1999 Aug;82(2):648-63. (1999)

elken I, Rotman Y, Bar Yosef O.

Responses of auditory-cortex neurons to structural features of natural sounds

Nature. 1999 Jan 14;397(6715):154-7. (1999)

Bergman H, Raz A, Feingold A, Nini A, Nelken I, Hansel D, Ben-Pazi H, Reches A.

Physiology of MPTP tremor

Mov Disord. 1998;13 Suppl 3:29-34. (1998)

Nelken I, Bar Yosef O, Young ED. Palmer, AR, Rees A, Summerfield AQ, Meddis R.

Responses of field AES neurons to virtual space stimuli

Psychophysical and Physiological Advances in Hearing. :504-512. (1997)

Young ED, Rice JJ, Spirou GA, Nelken I, Conley RA

Head-related transfer functions in cat: Neural representation and the effects of pinna movement

Binaural and Spatial Hearing in Real and Virtual Environments. :475-497. (1997)

Eric D. YoungKevin A. DavisIsrael Nelken

Synaptic relationships in the granule-cell associated systems in dorsal cochlear nucleus

Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System pp 155-166 (1997)

Israel NelkenYaron RotmanOmer Bar Yosef

Specializations of the auditory system for the analysis of natural sounds

Central Auditory Processing and Neural Modeling pp 43-53 (1997)

Israel Nelken, and Eric D. Young

Linear and nonlinear spectral integration in type IV neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. II. Predicting responses with the use of nonlinear models

Journal of Neurophysiology 78(2):790-9. (1997)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Linear and nonlinear spectral integration in type IV neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. I. Regions of linear interaction

J Neurophysiol. 1997 Aug;78(2):790-9. (1997)

Eric D. YoungIsrael Nelken

Interneurons which shape response properties in dorsal cochelar nucleus

Central Auditory Processing and Neural Modeling pp 101-115 (1997)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Why do cats need a dorsal cochlear nucleus?

J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 1996;7(3):199-220. (1996)

Nelken I, Young ED. Manley, GA, Klump GM, Koppl C, Fastl H, Oeckinghaus H.

The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN): Mechanisms and function

Advances in Hearing Research. :264-274. (1995)

Young ED1, Nelken I, Conley RA.

Somatosensory effects on neurons in dorsal cochlear nucleus

J Neurophysiol. 1995 Feb;73(2):743-65. (1995)

Vaadia E, Aertsen A, Nelken I.

‘Dynamics of neuronal interactions’ cannot be explained by ‘neuronal transients’

Proc Biol Sci. 1995 Sep 22;261(1362):407-10. (1995)

Nelken I, Young ED.

Two separate inhibitory mechanisms shape the responses of dorsal cochlear nucleus type IV units to narrowband and wideband stimuli

J Neurophysiol. 1994 Jun;71(6):2446-62. (1994)

Nelken I, Prut Y, Vaadia E, Abeles M.

Population responses to multifrequency sounds in the cat auditory cortex: one- and two-parameter families of sounds

Hear Res. 1994 Jan;72(1-2):206-22. (1994)

Nelken I, Prut Y, Vaadia E, Abeles M.

In search of the best stimulus: an optimization procedure for finding efficient stimuli in the cat auditory cortex

Hear Res. 1994 Jan;72(1-2):237-53. (1994)

Israel Nelken

A probabilistic approach to the analysis of propagation delays in large cortical axonal trees

Information Processing in the Cortex pp 29-49 (1992)

Aertsen A, Vaadia E, Abeles M, Ahissar E, Bergman H, Karmon B, Lavner Y, Margalit E, Nelken I, Rotter S.

Neural interactions in the frontal cortex of a behaving monkey: signs of dependence on stimulus context and behavioral state

J Hirnforsch. 1991;32(6):735-43. (1991)

Nelken I, Vaadia E.

A sensitive estimator for crosscorrelograms

Biol Cybern. 1990;64(1):51-60. (1990)

Nelken I.

Analysis of the activity of single neurons in stochastic settings

Biol Cybern. 1988;59(3):201-15. (1988)

Nelken I, Yaari Y.

The role of interstitial potassium in the generation of low-calcium hippocampal seizures

Isr J Med Sci. 1987 Jan-Feb;23(1-2):124-31. (1987)

Open Positions

A postdoctoral position is available in the field of auditory perception under the supervision of Prof. Israel Nelken. Click here for more information.

Additional Information

Honors:
1985 The A. Heller prize for excellence in Research Thesis
1991 Fullbright fellowship
1994 The Bergmann Memorial Research Grant (concurrently with BSF grant No. 93-00057)
1999 Research prize of the Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University – Hadassah Medical School.
2000 Bernard Katz Lecturer for the year 2000
2008 Michael Bruno prize, administered by Yad-Hanadiv foundation
2015 Rector prize for excellence in research and teaching
2016 The Michael Landau prize for the Sciences and Research
2021 Humboldt research prize

Israel Nelken

Professor

Email: israel.nelken@mail.huji.ac.il

Phone: +972-2-6584229

Fax: +972-2-6586077

Israel Nelken