jaralab | Santiago Jaramillo's research group at UO

We study the neural circuits that make auditory cognition possible. Our goal is to understand how we assign meaning to sounds, how we attend to sounds or ignore them, how we remember them, and how disorders of the brain can affect these processes.
Of particular interest is how our responses to sounds can change depending on context, a phenomenon called behavioral flexibility. Behaving appropriately after changes in context requires that organisms rapidly modify their expectations, associations between cues and rewards, or attentional state. Our lab investigates these cognitive processes by addressing three questions:

What happens to the speed and accuracy of behavioral responses after a change in context?
Where in the brain is information selected and re-routed to allow for different interpretations of the same stimulus?
How do neural circuits implement this flexibility?

In our experiments, we use techniques such as optogenetics, electrophysiology, and two-photon imaging, to monitor and manipulate neuronal activity of specific cell types in behaving rodents, together with theoretical and computational approaches, to uncover the mechanisms that underlie flexible behaviors.

We are committed to providing an inclusive environment and to celebrate the diversity of our researchers. We welcome the unique contributions every member of the lab can bring because of their education, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, religion, or disability.

We acknowledge that our lab is located on Kalapuya Ilihi -- the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people, who were dispossessed of their homeland by the U.S. Government over several years. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and Siletz Indians of Oregon.

Members

Santiago Jaramillo

Santiago Jaramillo member

member

Principal Investigator
Dept. of Biology

member

Matt Nardoci
Graduate student
co-advised (Murray)

member

Wendy Gillespie
Research assistant & Lab manager

member

Gabriel Toea
Undergrad researcher

member

Ciarra Thomas
Undergrad researcher

member

Jacob Eddy
Undergrad researcher

member

Diyar Dezay
Undergrad researcher

member

Komal Kaur
Undergrad researcher

member

Kaydyn Guelsdorf
Undergrad researcher

member

Researchers at all levels. Email us member

member

...and here is a list of past members.

Selected publications

Mohn JL, Baese-Berk MM, Jaramillo S (2024). Selectivity to acoustic features of human speech in the auditory cortex of the mouse. Hearing Research. 441:108920. (Full text: PMC10542132)
Schmid C, Haziq M, Baese-Berk MM, Murray JM, Jaramillo S (2023). Passive exposure to task-relevant stimuli enhances categorization learning. eLife:RP88406.
Hulsey D, Zumwalt K, Mazzucato L, McCormick DA, Jaramillo S (2023). Decision-making dynamics are predicted by arousal and uninstructed movements. bioRxiv. 2023.03.02.530651.
Nardoci MB, Lakunina AA, Henderling DC, Pedregon JC, Mohn JL, Jaramillo S (2022). Sound-Evoked Responses of Distinct Neuron Classes From the Tail of the Striatum. eNeuro. 14 September 2022, 9 (5).
Lakunina AA, Menashe N, Jaramillo S (2022). Contributions of Distinct Auditory Cortical Inhibitory Neuron Types to the Detection of Sounds in Background Noise. eNeuro. 15 February 2022, 9 (2).
Lakunina AA, Nardoci MB, Ahmadian Y, Jaramillo S (2020). Somatostatin-expressing interneurons in the auditory cortex mediate sustained suppression by spectral surround. Journal of Neuroscience. 40(18):3564-3575.
Hermoso-Mendizabal A, Hyafil A, Rueda-Orozco PE, Jaramillo S, Robbe D, de la Rocha J (2020). Response outcomes gate the impact of expectations on perceptual decisions. . Nature Communications 11, 1057.
Guo L, Weems JT, Walker WI, Levichev A, Jaramillo S (2019). Choice-selective neurons in the auditory cortex and in its striatal target encode reward expectation. Journal of Neuroscience. 39 (19):3687-3697.
Ponvert ND and Jaramillo S (2019). Auditory thalamostriatal and corticostriatal pathways convey complementary information about sound features. Journal of Neuroscience. 39 (2):271-280.
Guo L, Walker WI, Ponvert ND, Penix PL, Jaramillo S (2018). Stable representation of sounds in the posterior striatum during flexible auditory decisions. Nature Communications. 9:1534.
Guo L, Ponvert ND, Jaramillo S (2017). The role of sensory cortex in behavioral flexibility. Neuroscience. 345:3-11.
Gimenez TL, Lorenc M, Jaramillo S (2015). Adaptive categorization of sound frequency does not require the auditory cortex in rats. Journal of Neurophysiology. 114(2):1137-4518.
Ahrens S, Jaramillo S, Yu K, Gosh S, Hwang G, Paik R, Lai C, He M, Huang JZ and Li B (2015). ErbB4 regulation of a thalamic reticular nucleus circuit for sensory selection. Nature Neuroscience. 18:104-111.
Jaramillo S and Zador AM (2014). Mice and rats achieve similar levels of performance in an adaptive decision-making task. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 8:173.
In the news! — The Scientist — The Atlantic — Slashdot — The Times Beacon — and many more
Jaramillo S, Borges K and Zador AM (2014). Auditory thalamus and auditory cortex are equally modulated by context during flexible categorization of sounds. Journal of Neuroscience. 34(15):5291-5301.
Jaramillo S and Zador AM (2011). The auditory cortex mediates the perceptual effects of acoustic temporal expectation. Nature Neuroscience. 14(2):246-51.
Jaramillo S and Pearlmutter BA (2007). Optimal Coding Predicts Attentional Modulation of Activity in Neural Systems. Neural Computation. 19:1295-1312.
Jaramillo S and Pearlmutter BA (2006). Use your powers wisely: resource allocation in parallel channels. IEEE Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP). 2006:21-26
Jaramillo S and Pearlmutter BA (2004). A Normative Model of Attention: Receptive Field Modulation. Neurocomputing, 58-60:613-618.