Our Research

For a complete list publications out of the Schofield lab, please take a look at our NCBI bibliography. You can also read about our techniques, our funding, and our collaborators.

Journal Covers

Schofield, B.R. and Cant, N.B. (1996), Origins and targets of commissural connections between the cochlear nuclei in guinea pigs. J. Comp. Neurol., 375: 128-146.

Schofield, B.R. (2002), Ascending and descending projections from the superior olivary complex in guinea pigs: Different cells project to the cochlear nucleus and the inferior colliculus. J. Comp. Neurol., 453: 217-225.

Diana L. Coomes, Brett R. Schofield,
Separate projections from the inferior colliculus to the cochlear nucleus and thalamus in guinea pigs, Hearing Research, Volume 191, Issues 1–2, 2004, Pages 67-78,
ISSN 0378-5955

Schofield, B.R., Coomes, D.L. & Schofield, R.M. Cells in Auditory Cortex that Project to the Cochlear Nucleus in Guinea Pigs. *JARO* 7, 95–109 (2006).

Beebe, et al. (2020) Generation of a *ChAT^Cre* mouse line without the early onset hearing loss typical of the *C57BL/6J* strain. Hear Res 388:107896

Noftz, et al. (2021) Dense cholinergic projections to auditory and multisensory nuclei of the intercollicular midbrain. Hear Res, 411: 108352

Beebe, et al. (2023) Characterization of three cholinergic inputs to the cochlear nucleus. J Chem Neuroanat, 131: 102284

Current Projects

Above: A retrograde viral vector labels cells in the auditory cortex that make descending projections to the inferior colliculus

Descending Auditory Pathways: A major advance over the past 25 years has been the discovery of extensive pathways from auditory cortex to many lower brainstem auditory regions. Many of our studies have focused on identifying the auditory circuits that are contacted directly by the descending projections from auditory cortex. Another important focus of this work is the interaction between descending auditory pathways and neuromodulatory pathways.

Above: Cholinergic axons in the inferior colliculus are labeled with a chemically-selective viral tract tracing technique.

Cholinergic Circuits: Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that is important in normal hearing, development, aging, learning, and after damage to the nervous system. Understanding these functions is critical for developing approaches to help people with age-related hearing loss, difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments, learning to hear with cochlear implants or coping with hearing dysfunctions in disorders such as autism or schizophrenia. Our work will answer critical questions about the circuitry that underlies cholinergic function in the brainstem.

Above: A GABAergic cell (magenta) in the rostral pole of the inferior colliculus is surrounded by glutamatergic boutons (cyan) and a perineuronal net (green)

Types of Inhibitory Cells: Inhibitory neurons that use GABA or glycine as a neurotransmitter play key roles throughout the auditory system. Another area of emphasis in our lab focuses on several questions about these inhibitory cells: 1) are there specific molecular markers that distinguish subtypes of inhibitory cells that serve different functions in hearing? 2) do top-down circuits have direct connections with the inhibitory cells? 3) do cholinergic circuits have direct connections with the inhibitory cells?

Above: A cell expressing neuropeptide Y (green) also projects to the medial geniculate nucleus (magenta)

Circuitry of Subclasses of Inferior Colliculus Cells: Recent collaborative work with the Roberts lab has shown that two markers, vasoactive intestinal peptide, or VIP, and neuropeptide Y, or NPY, can be used to identify distinct subclasses of cells in the inferior colliculus, an auditory hub. We are working to understand what brain regions send inputs to these cell types, and to find out what brain regions these cell types send projections to.

Schofield Lab Publications

Below are images from our recent publications. Click an image to see the full paper.