Biographical Memoirs Volume 89 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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WILLIAM DUWAYNE NEFF
WILLIAM DUWAYNE NEFF
Pages 262-283
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From page 263... ...
Best known for his use of the ablation method to study the functions of the various levels of the auditory pathways, he combined behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroanatomical techniques to define deficits in auditory function more elaborate than simple audiometry. Rather than concocting intricate theories, he was content to follow experimental facts wherever they led.
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From page 264... ...
During his stay at Rochester, Dewey made lasting friendships with fellow graduate students Karl Kryter and J
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From page 265... ...
Hearing could be impaired at high frequencies, but never at low frequencies. Dewey realized the potential import of Dandy's findings for the place theory of hearing, in which near-threshold tones of any particular frequency were supposed to activate only a restricted and specific set of auditory nerve fibers.
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From page 266... ...
In an attempt to answer the first question, Schuknecht and Neff (Schuknecht and Neff, 1952) found that cochlear lesions confined to the apex resulted in modest hearing losses limited to low frequencies.
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From page 267... ...
A team led by Enrico Fermi had made important contributions to the Manhattan Project, including the first demonstration of a sustained nuclear reaction. Immediately after the war, Edward Teller returned to the University from Los Alamos and Harold Urey, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, came from Columbia University.
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From page 268... ...
Dewey and the other psychologists doing animal research were assigned laboratory space in a cockroach-infested, two-story, prefabricated wooden structure, officially known as the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology, but commonly referred to as the "Prefabs." Dewey set up soundproofed experimental chambers to test animal hearing and histological facilities to prepare tissue for microscopic evaluation of lesions. He established an electrophysiological laboratory in space belonging to the Section of Otolaryngology in Billings Hospital.
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From page 269... ...
With a coherent and, for its time, a well-funded research program, Dewey's laboratory appealed to prospective doctoral candidates as a place where they could successfully learn their craft. As one of his graduate students, Irving Diamond, said at a reunion some 45 years later: "You knew when you came to work in Dewey's lab that you were joining a winning team." As the last of the war veterans finished their graduate studies, Dewey was able to recruit younger, more traditional graduate students.
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From page 270... ...
The main topic of interest for Neff and his students was the function of the auditory cortex, although work was also done on lower levels of the auditory pathways. The extent of cortical lesions was based on electrophysiological mapping done by Clinton Woolsey and his colleagues (Woolsey, 1960)
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From page 271... ...
For example, later work showed that animals, after cortical removals, are capable of indicating the location of a sound by unlearned orientation head movements (Thompson and Welker, 1963; Poon, 1979) or simple learned responses (Heffner and Masterton, 1975)
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From page 272... ...
Originally an acoustical consulting company, BBN obtained many prestigious commissions in architectural acoustics, including the innovative Kresge Auditorium at MIT, the Shed at Tanglewood, and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. By the late 1950s the company was looking to diversify.
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From page 273... ...
to reestablish his research program. Dewey attracted several people to the center: Jorgen Fex, an auditory physiologist who pioneered the study of auditory efferents, came from the Karolinska Institute after stints in Australia and the National Institutes of Health; Conrad Mueller, a visual scientist best known for his work on Limulus eye, came from Columbia University; Willem van Bergeijk, a physicist interested in the evolution of hearing, arrived from Bell Laboratories; Ilsa Schwartz, an auditory neuroanatomist, came from a postdoctoral fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical School; and Boyd Campbell, a comparative neuroanatomist, moved
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From page 274... ...
Building on the graduate research of Colston Nauman Moore, done at Chicago, they were able to show that sound localization was unperturbed by section of the corpus callosum or the commissure of the inferior colliculus, but was impaired by section of the trapezoid body, the main fiber bundle allowing for the integration of binaural inputs in the superior olivary complex (Moore et al., 1974; Casseday and Neff, 1975)
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From page 275... ...
He received the Annual Award of the Beltone Institute for Hearing Research and the Award of Merit of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. IN SUMMARY During Dewey's professional career, much of experimental psychology moved from emphasizing speculative doctrines, as exemplified by various learning theories, to obtaining more empirical descriptions of the brain, behavior, and the relation between the two.
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From page 276... ...
The comforting atmosphere universally felt by the people who worked with him was directly related to his social skill in providing education under the guise of friendly chats. He was able to attract some of the best students available and they always benefited from his relaxed yet rigorous instructional style.
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From page 277... ...
E Stimulation deafness: A study of temporary and permanent hearing losses resulting from exposure to noise and to blast impulses, 1949.
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From page 278... ...
F Cortical centers and midbrain pathways involved in sound localization in space, 1979.
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From page 279... ...
1951. An experi mental study of auditory damage following blows to the head.
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1947. A further study of the effects of partial section of the auditory nerve.
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From page 281... ...
Auditory discrimination in sonar operation. In A Survey Report on Human Factors in Undersea Warfare, pp.
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From page 282... ...
Chow. Degeneration of caudal medial geniculate body following cortical lesion ventral to auditory area II in the cat.
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From page 283... ...
Sequential auditory and visual discriminations after temporal lobe ablation in mon keys. Physiol.
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