Allison J. Doupe

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Allison Jane Doupe (* 1954 in Montreal ; † October 24, 2014 ) was a Canadian neurobiologist and professor of physiology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco . Her specialty was the neural basis of bird song and the biological similarities between bird song and the spoken language of humans .

Life

Allison Doupe grew up in the Canadian city of Montreal and attended schools for Francophone Canadians there . After her studies at McGill University in Montreal, she moved to Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) , where in 1979 at the same time the doctor -degree ( Ph.D. ) in neurobiology in the laboratory of Paul H. Patterson and conclusion as a doctor ( MD ) acquired. This was followed by a postdoc as an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital and admission as a doctor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles . Thanks to a scholarship, she also worked as a scientist in Masakazu Konishi's group at the California Institute of Technology . From 1993 Doupe was Assistant Professor and since 2000 Full Professor at the University of California in San Francisco .

In October 2014 she died of breast cancer after a long illness . She left behind her husband, neurobiologist Michael Brainard, and the couple's two children.

Research topics

In her doctoral thesis, Allison Doupe demonstrated the effects of certain environmental factors on the development of neurons in the autonomic nervous system , a finding that quickly had consequences for research into the question of how the molecular and cellular basis of the influence of hormones and growth factors on this system arise. In the working group of the neuroethologist Masakazu Konishi, she combined her interest in the interactions between ontogenesis and behavior with research approaches in cognitive neurobiology and dealt for the first time with the neural basis of bird song.

As early as the 1960s, Peter R. Marler had demonstrated in his behavioral biological observations and experiments using the roof chambers of the Golden Gate Park as an example , that juvenile birds usually reproduce the song of their species as nestlings at the age of 10 to 50 days by imprinting on older conspecifics from their father - learn at a time when they themselves have not yet sing. Doupe's model animals were male zebra finches who, during a sensitive phase in their youth, 'stored' their father's song in their memory, "and later they practice and perfect their song by comparing their song with the memory of his." Marler's interpretation of the behavioral observations called auditory template hypothesis (analogously: hypothesis about templates created by the hearing center) combined the model, character and the gradual adaptation of the self-produced sounds through 'practice' to the sounds heard in the model into a functional whole. In the 1980s, however, there was still no evidence of the nerve cells from which the suspected 'auditory template' is built.

Allison Doupe succeeded in identifying a network of sensorimotor neurons (technically: anterior forebrain pathway) in the forebrains of young birds , in which individual neurons respond selectively to their own song, but not to the song of an adult model. She interpreted her findings as meaning “that every time a young bird practices its song, the electrical excitation conducted via a motor path is compared with a parallel excitation of those neurons [in the original: sent through the song-learning pathway ], in which the template of adult singing has been saved. ”This efference copy model, it said in an obituary in the journal Nature in 2014 , although still a theoretical model,“ has proven useful for understanding brain activity during learning, including the acquisition of Human language. "

The parallels between the communication systems of birds and humans, described earlier by Peter Marler, which arose independently of one another, also stimulated Doupe to undertake comparative studies, which in 1999 resulted in an influential review that , according to Nature, is considered to be classic.

Honors

Allison Doupe has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2008 .

In 2012 she was awarded the W. Alden Spencer Award , in 2013 the Cozzarelli Prize of the journal PAS and in 2014 the Pradel Research Award .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of deceased Harward graduates.
  2. ↑ a b Thomas R. Insel and Story Landis: Allison Doupe (1954-2014). In: Nature . Volume 515, 2014, p. 344, doi: 10.1038 / 515344a .
  3. ↑ a b Samuel Barondes and Michael P. Stryker: Allison Doupe: In Memoriam. In: Neuron. Volume 85, No. 4, 2015, S 667–668, doi: 10.1016 / j.neuron.2015.01.030 .
  4. ↑ In Memoriam: Allison Doupe, MD, PhD. ( Memento of March 7, 2015 on the Internet Archive ) Obituary from the Department of Psychology at the University of California.
  5. ↑ Peter Marler and Miwako Tamura: Culturally Transmitted Patterns of Vocal Behavior in Sparrows. In: Science. Volume 146, No. 3650, 1964, pp. 1483-1486, doi: 10.1126 / science.146.3650.1483 .
    Peter R. Marler: A comparative approach to vocal learning: Song development in white-crowned sparrows. In: Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology. Volume 71 (2, Pt. 2), 1970, pp. 1-25, doi: 10.1037 / h0029144 .
  6. ^ Jill Soha: The auditory template hypothesis: a review and comparative perspective. In: Animal Behavior. Volume 124, 2017, pp. 247-254, doi: 10.1016 / j.anbehav.2016.09.016 .
  7. ↑ Singing traditions and language. Research Report 2003 of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, on mpg.de .
  8. ↑ Allison J. Doupe and Patricia K. Kuhl: Birdsong and Human Speech: Common Themes and Mechanisms. In: Annual Review of Neuroscience. Volume 22, 1999, pp. 567-631, doi: 10.1146 / annurev.neuro.22.1.567 , full text (PDF) .
  9. ↑ entry: Allison J. Doupe in the list of members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
  10. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter D. (PDF; 575 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved August 3, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Doupe, Allison J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doupe, Allison Jane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian neurobiologist and psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Montreal
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 2014