Masakazu "Mark" Konishi(小西 正一,Konishi Masakazu, born 17 February 1933) is a Japanese neurobiologist, known for his research on prey capture auditory systems of barn owls and singing in songbirds.
After growing up in wartime Kyoto, Konishi moved to study at Sapporo Agricultural College, Hokkaido University. Konishi studied for his doctoral thesis on properties of birdsong under Peter Robert Marler at University of California, Berkeley. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in 1985. The NAS membership directory notes that "Konishi is a world leader in linking ethology and neurophysiology. He has shown the crucial role of auditory feedback in bird songs, has elucidated the role of sound frequency and spatial characteristics in auditory localization by barn owl, and has discovered the role of hormones in early differentiation of vocal control areas in the male avian brain."
Selected publications
Albeck, Y. and Konishi, M. (1995) Responses of neurons in the owl's time processing pathway to partially binaurally correlated signals. J. Neurophysiol. 74: 1689-1700.
Konishi, M. (1995) Neural mechanisms of auditory image formation. In: The Cognitive Neurosciences, Ed. M. S. Gazzaniga, MIT Press pp. 269–277.
Peña, J. L., Viete, S., Albeck, Y. and Konishi, M. (1996) Tolerance to sound intensity of binaural coincidence detection in the nucleus laminaris of the owl. J. Neurosci. 16: 7046-7054.
Viete, S. and Peña, J. L. and Konishi, M. (1997) The effects of interaural intensity difference on theprocessing of interaural time difference in the owl’s nucleus laminaris. J. Neurosci. 17: 1815 - 1824.
Saberi, K. and Farahbod, H. and Konishi, M. (1998) How do owls localize interaurally phase-ambiguous signals? Proc. Natl. Acad. Scie USA 95: 6465 - 6468.
Schmidt, M. and Konishi, M. (1998) Gating of auditory responses in the vocal control system of awake songbirds. Nature Neurosci. 1:513-518.
Saberi, K., Takahashi, Y., Konishi, M., Albeck, Y., Arthur, B. J. and Farahbod, H.1998 Effects of interaural decorrelation on neural and behavioral detection of spatial cues. Neuron 21:789-798.
Schmidt, M. and Konishi, M. (1998) Gating of auditory responses in the vocal control system of awake songbirds. Nature Neurosci. 1:513-518.
Konishi, M. (1999) Sound localization in owls. Elsevvier’s Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, Eds G. Adelman and B. H. Smith. pp. 1906–1908.
Saberi, K., Takahashi, Y. and Farahbod, H. and Konishi, M. (1999) Neural bases of an auditory illusion and its elimination in owls. Nature Neurosci 1:656-659.
Konishi, M. (2000) Neural mechanisms of sound localization in owls. Russ. J. Physiol. 86:884-897 (in Russian).
Konishi, M. (2000) Study of sound localization by owls and its relevance to humans. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. Part A 126: 459-469.
Peña, J. L. and Konishi, M. (2000) Cellular mechanisms for resolving phase ambiguity in the owl’s inferior colliculus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97:11787-11792.
Hudspeth, A. J. and Konishi, M. (2000) Auditory neuroscience: Development, transduction, and integration. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97: 11690-11691.
Köppl, C. Manley, G. A. and Konishi, M. (2000) Auditory processing in birds. Curr. Op. Neurobiol. 10:474-481.
Konishi, M. (2000) Study of sound localization by owls and its relevance to humans. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. A 126: 459-469.
Peña, J. L. and Konishi, M. (2001) Auditory spatial receptive fields created by multiplication. Science 292:249-252.
