Photo of Leslie Kay
Leslie M. Kay Office: BPSB 331 Phone: (773) 702-6174 Email Interests:

Roles of context in perception; olfactory neurophysiology; olfaction and cognition; sensorimotor integration; oscillatory dynamics; computational neuroscience; behavioral neuroscience
Professor

I received my BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then worked for the original GenBank project at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I was a programmer/analyst in business applications for a number of years in the mid- to late eighties, and then returned to graduate school at UC Berkeley to complete my PhD in Biophysics working with Walter J. Freeman III. I did my postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Gilles Laurent at the California Institute of Technology, where I studied olfactory bulb mitral cell responses to changes in odor context. I have been at The University of Chicago since 2000, and my laboratory studies the effects of behavioral context on olfactory and limbic system neurophysiology. We focus on the mechanisms and functions associated with intra- and inter-regional oscillatory cooperativity primarily in the rat olfactory and limbic systems.

Courses

  • Biological Psychology (PSYC 20300/30300)
  • Mind (SOSC 141, 142, 143)
  • Mind, Brain and Meaning (LING 26520/PSYC 26520/PHIL 26520)
  • Animal Models in the Study of Cognition (PSYC 28910)
  • Foundations of Neuroscience: Historical Perspective (PSYC 37250)