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“To Ear is Human, to Frogive is Divine”: Bob Capranica’s legacy to auditory neuroethology

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Abstract

Bob Capranica was a towering figure in the field of auditory neuroethology. Among his many contributions are the exploitation of the anuran auditory system as a general vertebrate model for studying communication, the introduction of a signal processing approach for quantifying sender–receiver dynamics, and the concept of the matched filter for efficient neural processing of complex vocal signals. In this paper, meant to honor Bob on his election to Fellow of the International Society for Neuroethology, I provide a description and analysis of some of his most important research, and I highlight how the concepts and data he contributed still inspire neuroethology today.

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Abbreviations

AP:

Amphibian papilla

AM:

Amplitude modulation

ACF:

Autocorrelation function

BP:

Basilar papilla

CF:

Characteristic frequency

IC:

Inferior colliculus

ICN:

International Congress of Neuroethology

PRR:

Pulse repetition rate

TS:

Torus semicircularis

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Acknowledgments

Bob Capranica was a major influence on my thinking and on my scholarship. Even after his retirement, he continued to inspire me, and by extension my students, by his high standards and his insistence on interpreting physiology in the light of behavior. I thank Jacob Christensen-Dalsgaard, Emma Coddington, Heather Eisthen, Hamilton Farris, and Kim Hoke for organizing the Amphibian Satellite Symposium at ICN2012 and for providing me an opportunity to share my view of Bob’s impact on the field. I was honored to have Bob’s wife, Pat, and his cousin, Tom Capranica, attend my talk. I thank Pat Capranica for sharing the photograph of Bob in Fig. 1. I also thank Mark Bee, Peter M. Narins, James A. Simmons, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on this manuscript. Research in my laboratory described in this manuscript was supported by National Institute of Health grants NS21911, NS28565 and DC05257.

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  1. Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Andrea Megela Simmons

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Simmons, A.M. “To Ear is Human, to Frogive is Divine”: Bob Capranica’s legacy to auditory neuroethology. J Comp Physiol A 199, 169–182 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-012-0786-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-012-0786-2

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