Christoph E. Schreiner
Born
Christoph Eberhard Heinrich Schreiner

(1950-02-18) February 18, 1950 (age 74)
Zernien, Germany
EducationUniversity of Göttingen (Masters, PhD, MD)
Max-Planck-Institute, Göttingen and University of California, San Francisco (post-doctoral)
Medical career
ProfessionAuditory Neuroscience
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Francisco
ResearchBasic and clinical sciences of hearing
Awards2000 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award[1], 2022 ARO Award of Merit[2]

Christoph E. Schreiner is a German-American neuroscientist and Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of California, San Francisco. His research on the functional organization of the central auditory system in the mammalian brain has elucidated the encoding of complex sounds, such as speech and communication signals, in normal and hearing impaired models. He is best known for his pioneering work to describe the response properties and topographical organization of neurons in the mammalian auditory cortex[3][4][5][6]. He is the recipient of the 2022 Association for Research in Otolaryngology Award of Merit[2], which cited him for illuminating "many key aspects of auditory cortical information processing and their subcortical origins."

Early life and education

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Schreiner grew up in Zernien, Germany, where his father was the local doctor and delivered him in their home clinic. He came from a long line of teachers, and earlier, theologians, but his father, uncle and brother were all physicians who attended medical school at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Schreiner followed the same path, but pursued both a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics at the same university. He worked under the tutelage of Prof. Manfred R. Schroeder, who was a faculty member at the Third Institute of Physics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, renowned for using innovative applications of math to various acoustics problems in the real-world relating to speech, hearing, and concert hall acoustics. As he blended his interests in both human physiology and acoustics, he became convinced that psychophysics phenomena had to be understood in the context of both the biophysics and physiology of the sensory nervous system.

In 1977, with a fresh Physics PhD in hand and still completing his medical training, Schreiner embarked on actual physiological studies of the auditory system in his first postdoctoral position in Göttingen at the Max Planck Institute lab of Prof. Otto Creutzfeldt – an early pioneer in higher order visual neurophysiology who wanted to expand into audition. It was there that Schreiner published his first highly cited paper, on the “Thalamocortical transformation of responses to complex auditory stimuli” in 1980[7].

Career in auditory neuroscience

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After completing his training in 1980, Schreiner was offered the chance to lead the Auditory Group at Max Planck, though he was encouraged by Creutzfeldt to first do a short postdoctoral stint with Michael M. Merzenich in California to broaden his experience with auditory neurophysiology experiments, as well as learn how other labs scientifically and technically approached physiology experiments. What was initially just a one-year fellowship eventually became a 30 year collaborative partnership that produced several canonical works on the organization of sound feature representations in the cortex, as well as the mechanisms and therapeutic applications of cortical plasticity.

Schreiner has remained at UCSF in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery[8] for the entirety of his academic career. He started as an Assistant Research Physiologist in 1984 and rose through the University of California academic ranks[9] to reach Professor in Residence in 1996, and to Professor in 2007. He served as Vice-Chair of the Department from 2004-2019. He also held the position of Professor in Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences[10] from 2009-2024.

Schreiner has published more than 140 articles[11].

Research

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Functional cortical organization

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A large part of Schreiner’s research focused on understanding the functional organization of the auditory cortex in rodents, cats, and new world monkeys. Electrophysiological mapping studies across various fields within the auditory cortex revealed a number of organizational principles and neuroanatomical correlates for temporal and spectral components of sounds[4][5][12][13][14] superimposed on or in addition to the well-known tonotopic organization.

Along with his long-time collaborator and friend Dr. Jeff Winer[15], Schreiner published a definitive reference on the Auditory Cortex in 2011[16].

Functional midbrain and thalamus organization

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Schreiner's research demonstrated that spectral and temporal response properties and spatial organization in the inferior colliculus[17][18] and the medial geniculate nucleus[7][19][20] show distinct differences from cortical neurons, giving rise to a neural coding transformation as sound information ascends the auditory neuraxis.

Schreiner and Winer published a comprehensive reference on the Inferior Colliculus[21] in 2005.

Cortical plasticity

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Another dimension of Schreiner's research has been to uncover the expressions and mechanisms of experience-induced representational plasticity in core auditory cortex, including for sound frequency, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, and sound intensity[22][23][24][25][26]. Specific interactions between excitatory and inhibitory inputs, modulated by release of neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine underlie rapid plastic changes of receptive fields and result in behaviorally testable changes in psychophysical performance.

Complex auditory receptive fields

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Schreiner's lab expanded the computational tool set for characterizing nonlinear properties of central auditory responses. Using information-theoretic approaches and variations on the spike-triggered receptive field approach, they demonstrated that central, especially cortical, receptive fields require a more complex, multi-dimensional description to capture their processing than most midbrain or thalamic neurons[27][28][29][30][31].

Hearing impairment effects in cortex

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Schreiner and colleagues published several key studies on the effect of electrical cochlear stimulation on the evoked activity in cortical neurons in animal models and on the expression of tinnitus in implant patients[32][33][34][35].

Academic service

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Funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 30 years, Schreiner gave back by serving in several capacities. He reviewed NIH grants as a member of the AUD study section of the Center for Scientific Review[36] and chaired it from 2005-2007. He served on the Advisory Council[37] for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (2016-2019) and was a member of the Multi Council Workgroup[38] for the BRAIN Initiative.

On an international scale, he has been the chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4All" program in Oldenburg, Germany[39] since 2011. He has also served on the editorial board for Hearing Research, Experimental Brain Research, and was an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology[40] and the journal Audiology & Neuro-Otology[41].

Trainees

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Schreiner advised or co-advised 22 doctoral students, and 25 post-doctoral fellows.

List of Trainees
Dates Name Program or School Role
1979 - 1981 Thomas Lewien University of Göttingen PhD advisor
1980 - 1983 Helmut Spenner University of Münster PhD advisor
1987 - 1989 Thomas Chimento Speech and Hearing Science doctoral program PhD advisor
1989 - 1990 Gregg Recanzone Neuroscience doctoral program PhD advisor
1987 - 1991 Mitchell Sutter Bioengineering doctoral program PhD advisor
1989 - 1992 David Morledge Speech and Hearing doctoral program PhD advisor
1990 - 1995 Barbara Calhoun Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
1990 - 1993 Diane Keeling Speech and Hearing doctoral program PhD advisor
1990 - 1992 Marcia Raggio Speech and Hearing Doctoral Program PhD co-advisor
1989 - 1991 Tony Sahley Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
1992 - 1998 Sarah Wong Speech and Hearing doctoral program PhD advisor
1995 - 2001 Lee Miller Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
1997 - 2000 Monty Escabi Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2000 - 2006 Andrew Tan Neuroscience Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2001 - 2007 Craig Atencio Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2003 - 2008 Marc Heiser Neuroscience Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2006 - 2012 Jonathan Shih Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2008 - 2014 Patrick Hullett Bioengineering Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2010 - 2015 Bryan Seybold Neuroscience Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2010 - 2014 Andrew Saxe Psychology Doctoral Program - Stanford PhD co-advisor
2014 - 2020 Jermyn See Neuroscience Doctoral Program PhD advisor
2019 - present Congcong Hu Neuroscience Doctoral Program PhD advisor
1980 - 1982 John V. Urbas, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1988 - 1988 William McKerrow, FRCS Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1989 - 1989 Joseph Toner, FRCS Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1987 - 1988 Julie Mendelson, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1987 - 1988 Philip Joris, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1988 - 1989 Aniruddha Das, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1989 - 1990 Roland Gerlach, MD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1988 - 1990 Keli Cao, MD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1992 - 1993 Katharina Krüger, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1992 - 1993 Ekkehard Schulze-Krüger, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1991 - 1995 Xiaoqin Wang, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1993 - 1995 Michael Brosch, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1995 - 1998 Srikantan Nagarajan, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1995 - 2001 Ben Bonham, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1996 - 2001 Heather Read, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1996 - 2003 Mark Kvale, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1996 - 1998 Haggai Attias, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1997 - 1999 Suman Kumar, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1997 - 2000 Purvis Bedenbaugh, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision[
1998 - 1999 Amir Akhavan, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
1999 - 2000 Benoit Goddey, MD, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2000 - 2008 Kazuo Imaizumi, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2001 - 2004 Benedicte Philibert, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2001 - 2004 Robert Liu, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2001 - 2004 Jennifer Linden, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2002 - 2005 Daniel Polley, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2003 - 2006 Ching-Ling Teng, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2005 - 2010 Robert Froemke, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2006 - 2012 Kexin Yuan, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2007 - 2012 Craig Atencio, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2008 - 2009 Sandeep Manyam, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2014 - 2015 Sungchil Yan, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2016 - present Natsumi Homma, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2016 - 2020 Kyunghee Kim, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2017 - 2022 Joshua Downer, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2020 - 2021 Reza Amanipour, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2020 - 2021 Jermyn See, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision
2021 - present Mina Sagedhi Najafabadi, PhD Post-Doc researcher Research Supervision

Personal life

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While working in the Coleman Laboratory at UCSF with Michael M. Merzenich, he met cochlear implant team audiologist, Marcia Raggio. Since his postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF was only for one year, he returned to his work at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. However, he returned to San Francisco within a year. He and Marcia were married in San Francisco in 1988. He became a loving stepfather to Marcia’s son, Noah, and their daughter Christina was born in 1991. Christina completed her clinical doctorate in psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley in 2023.

References

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  1. ^ "Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award".
  2. ^ a b "2022 ARO Award of Merit". Retrieved 6 May 2024.
  3. ^ Miller, Lee M.; Escabí, Monty A.; Read, Heather L.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (1 January 2002). "Spectrotemporal Receptive Fields in the Lemniscal Auditory Thalamus and Cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 87 (1): 516-527. doi:10.1152/jn.00395.2001.
  4. ^ a b Schreiner, Christoph E.; Read, Heather L.; Sutter, Mitchell L. (March 2000). "Modular Organization of Frequency Integration in Primary Auditory Cortex". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 23 (1): 501–529. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.501.
  5. ^ a b Schreiner, Christoph E.; Urbas, John V. (January 1988). "Representation of amplitude modulation in the auditory cortex of the cat. II. Comparison between cortical fields". Hearing Research. 32 (1): 49–63. doi:10.1016/0378-5955(88)90146-3.
  6. ^ Linden, Jennifer F.; Liu, Robert C.; Sahani, Maneesh; Schreiner, Christoph E.; Merzenich, Michael M. (October 2003). "Spectrotemporal Structure of Receptive Fields in Areas AI and AAF of Mouse Auditory Cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 90 (4): 2660–2675. doi:10.1152/jn.00751.2002.
  7. ^ a b Creutzfeldt, Otto; Hellweg, F. -C.; Schreiner, Christoph (1 April 1980). "Thalamocortical transformation of responses to complex auditory stimuli". Experimental Brain Research. 39 (1): 87–104. doi:10.1007/BF00237072.
  8. ^ "UCSF Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery".
  9. ^ "UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ACADEMIC TITLES" (PDF). Retrieved 5 May 2024.
  10. ^ "UCS Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences".
  11. ^ "Schreiner CE - Search Results - PubMed". PubMed.
  12. ^ Tan, Andrew Y. Y.; Zhang, Li I.; Merzenich, Michael M.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (July 2004). "Tone-Evoked Excitatory and Inhibitory Synaptic Conductances of Primary Auditory Cortex Neurons". Journal of Neurophysiology. 92 (1): 630–643. doi:10.1152/jn.01020.2003.
  13. ^ Atencio, Craig A.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (3 March 2010). "Columnar Connectivity and Laminar Processing in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex". PLoS ONE. 5 (3): e9521. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009521.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  14. ^ See, Jermyn Z; Atencio, Craig A; Sohal, Vikaas S; Schreiner, Christoph E (5 June 2018). "Coordinated neuronal ensembles in primary auditory cortical columns". eLife. 7. doi:10.7554/eLife.35587.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  15. ^ "Winer Laboratory Home". mcb.berkeley.edu.
  16. ^ Winer, Jeffery A.; Schreiner, Christoph (2011). The auditory cortex. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4419-0074-6.
  17. ^ Langner, G.; Schreiner, C. E. (1 December 1988). "Periodicity coding in the inferior colliculus of the cat. I. Neuronal mechanisms". Journal of Neurophysiology. 60 (6): 1799–1822. doi:10.1152/jn.1988.60.6.1799.
  18. ^ Schreiner, Christoph E.; Langner, Gerald (24 July 1997). "Laminar fine structure of frequency organization in auditory midbrain". Nature. 388 (6640): 383–386. doi:10.1038/41106.
  19. ^ Miller, Lee M; Escabı́, Monty A; Read, Heather L; Schreiner, Christoph E (October 2001). "Functional Convergence of Response Properties in the Auditory Thalamocortical System". Neuron. 32 (1): 151–160. doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(01)00445-7.
  20. ^ Shih, Jonathan Y; Yuan, Kexin; Atencio, Craig A; Schreiner, Christoph E (14 May 2020). "Distinct Manifestations of Cooperative, Multidimensional Stimulus Representations in Different Auditory Forebrain Stations". Cerebral Cortex. 30 (5): 3130–3147. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhz299.
  21. ^ Winer, Jeffery A.; Schreiner, Christoph (2005). The inferior colliculus: with 168 illustrations. New York, NY: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-27083-8.
  22. ^ Recanzone, Gh; Schreiner, Ce; Merzenich, Mm (1 January 1993). "Plasticity in the frequency representation of primary auditory cortex following discrimination training in adult owl monkeys". The Journal of Neuroscience. 13 (1): 87–103. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.13-01-00087.1993.
  23. ^ Froemke, Robert C.; Merzenich, Michael M.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (15 November 2007). "A synaptic memory trace for cortical receptive field plasticity". Nature. 450 (7168): 425–429. doi:10.1038/nature06289.
  24. ^ Froemke, Robert C; Carcea, Ioana; Barker, Alison J; Yuan, Kexin; Seybold, Bryan A; Martins, Ana Raquel O; Zaika, Natalya; Bernstein, Hannah; Wachs, Megan; Levis, Philip A; Polley, Daniel B; Merzenich, Michael M; Schreiner, Christoph E (January 2013). "Long-term modification of cortical synapses improves sensory perception". Nature Neuroscience. 16 (1): 79–88. doi:10.1038/nn.3274.
  25. ^ Seybold, Bryan A.; Stanco, Amelia; Cho, Kathleen K. A.; Potter, Gregory B.; Kim, Carol; Sohal, Vikaas S.; Rubenstein, John L. R.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (21 August 2012). "Chronic reduction in inhibition reduces receptive field size in mouse auditory cortex". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (34): 13829–13834. doi:10.1073/pnas.1205909109.
  26. ^ Homma, Natsumi Y.; Hullett, Patrick W.; Atencio, Craig A.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (March 2020). "Auditory Cortical Plasticity Dependent on Environmental Noise Statistics". Cell Reports. 30 (13): 4445–4458.e5. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2020.03.014.
  27. ^ Escabı́, Monty A.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (15 May 2002). "Nonlinear Spectrotemporal Sound Analysis by Neurons in the Auditory Midbrain". The Journal of Neuroscience. 22 (10): 4114–4131. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.22-10-04114.2002.
  28. ^ Miller, Lee M.; Escabí, Monty A.; Read, Heather L.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (1 January 2002). "Spectrotemporal Receptive Fields in the Lemniscal Auditory Thalamus and Cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 87 (1): 516–527. doi:10.1152/jn.00395.2001.
  29. ^ Atencio, Craig A.; Sharpee, Tatyana O.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (June 2008). "Cooperative Nonlinearities in Auditory Cortical Neurons". Neuron. 58 (6): 956–966. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2008.04.026.
  30. ^ Atencio, Craig A.; Sharpee, Tatyana O.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (15 May 2012). "Receptive field dimensionality increases from the auditory midbrain to cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 107 (10): 2594–2603. doi:10.1152/jn.01025.2011.
  31. ^ Kim, Kyunghee X.; Atencio, Craig A.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (27 February 2020). "Stimulus dependent transformations between synaptic and spiking receptive fields in auditory cortex". Nature Communications. 11 (1). doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14835-7.
  32. ^ McKerrow, William S.; Schreiner, Christoph E.; Merzenich, Michael M.; Snyder, Russell L.; Toner, Joseph G. (July 1991). "Tinnitus Suppression by Cochlear Implants". Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology. 100 (7): 552–558. doi:10.1177/000348949110000706.
  33. ^ Raggio, Marcia W.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (1 December 1999). "Neuronal Responses in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex to Electrical Cochlear Stimulation. III. Activation Patterns in Short- and Long-Term Deafness". Journal of Neurophysiology. 82 (6): 3506–3526. doi:10.1152/jn.1999.82.6.3506.
  34. ^ Cheung, Steven W.; Bonham, Ben H.; Schreiner, Christoph E.; Godey, Benoit; Copenhaver, David A. (27 May 2009). "Realignment of Interaural Cortical Maps in Asymmetric Hearing Loss". The Journal of Neuroscience. 29 (21): 7065–7078. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6072-08.2009.
  35. ^ Beitel, Ralph E.; Vollmer, Maike; Raggio, Marcia W.; Schreiner, Christoph E. (August 2011). "Behavioral training enhances cortical temporal processing in neonatally deafened juvenile cats". Journal of Neurophysiology. 106 (2): 944–959. doi:10.1152/jn.00731.2010.
  36. ^ "AUD | NIH Center for Scientific Review". public.csr.nih.gov.
  37. ^ "National Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Advisory Council | NIDCD". www.nidcd.nih.gov. 16 January 2024.
  38. ^ "Multi-Council Working Group | BRAIN Initiative". braininitiative.nih.gov.
  39. ^ "Hearing4All – Hearing4All".
  40. ^ "Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology". SpringerLink.
  41. ^ "Audiology and Neurotology". Karger Publishers.