Eric Knudsen

Eric Knudsen ( born October 7, 1949 in Palo Alto, California) is an American neurobiologist.

Knudsen made ​​1971 his bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by a master's degree in neuroscience in 1973 at the same university. In 1976 he was at Theodore H. Bullock at the University of California, San Diego, PhD. As a post - graduate student, he was from 1976 to 1979 with Masakazu Konishi at Caltech. Since 1980 he has been at Stanford University Medical School in the Department of Neurosciences, where he is a professor since 1988 and from 2001 to 2005 the faculty board.

Knudsen is known for his study of the neuronal processing of the sense of hearing of the barn owl, which these uses for hunting. In 1978 he published Konishi acclaimed work in neurobiology about the discovery of an auditory map in the brain of the owl, which maps the spatial coordinates of the sound source. They also found the mechanisms of sound localization by the owl ( difference in arrival time of the sound, asymmetry of the ears, making use of different frequencies ) and how they can customize the map due to the visual information.

In 2005 he was awarded the Gruber Prize for Neuroscience. He also received the Lashley Award of the American Philosophical Society (2008), the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience (1984 ), the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences (1988) and the Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the AAAS. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2002) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS).