Fernando Nodal

Dr Fernando Nodal read Biological Sciences (BSc, MSc) at the University of Salamanca, Spain, where he also obtained his PhD in Neuroscience, studying the neural circuits of auditory reflexes. In 2000 thanks to a Marie Curie Fellowship from the EU, he moved to Oxford to work with Prof A J King on the development of spatial representations in the ferret Superior Colliculus. Since then, Dr Nodal has been a member of the Auditory Neuroscience group supported by Wellcome Trust. He continues to research different aspects of auditory perception by combining behavioural, electrophysiological and anatomical techniques. One of his main interests is studying the neural plasticity exhibited by the auditory system using a unilateral conductive hearing loss model. Neural plasticity underpins our stable perception in ever-changing situations, although maladaptive processes can result in phantom perceptions like tinnitus. Another area of his research is to unravel how the behavioural relevance of sensory stimuli affects their neural representation.