Masakazu Konishi

At 91 years old, Masakazu Konishi physical status not available right now. We will update Masakazu Konishi's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Following his graduation in 1963, Konishi undertook two postdoctoral positions in Germany, at the University of Tübingen (1963–64) and in the Division of Experimental Neurophysiology at the Max-Planck Institute (1964–65). He then returned to the United States, working at the University of Wisconsin (1965–66) and later at Princeton University (1966–75). During this time, Konishi began research projects exploring owl and songbird behaviour.

While based at Princeton, Konishi attempted to use neurophysiological methods to measure hearing in birds, by determining the threshold sensitivities of single neurons in the cochlear nuclei: all species tested could hear low frequencies, but species with high frequencies in their songs could also hear high frequencies. He also investigated the development of hearing in duck embryos. Konishi's research on owls began when he acquired three nestling barn owls from a local birdwatcher.

Konishi was a Professor of Biology at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1975 to 1980, and served as Bing Professor from 1980 until his retirement in 2013. In the 1980s, he and his collaborators raised white-crowned sparrows in isolation, and demonstrated that these birds still preferred their own species' song over heterospecific songs from the same geographic area.

Konishi was a leader in the field of avian neuroethology and a foremost expert in avian auditory systems. Throughout his career, he advised dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Among his Caltech students was Larry Katz, whom Konishi described as his "most adventurous and skillful" student. Katz introduced brain slice techniques into Konishi's lab. Work by students in the lab, including Katz, Mark Gurney and Jim McCasland, helped establish that neurons in the songbirds' HVC respond to sound and are selective for the bird's own song.

Konishi was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1979) and the National Academy of Sciences (1985). He was a founding member of the International Society for Neuroethology, and served as the society's second President from 1986 to 1989.

Source

• F. O. Schmitt Prize (1987)
• International Prize for Biology (1990)
• Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award (2003, Brandeis University)
• Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience (2004, MIT)
• Gerard Prize (2004, Society for Neuroscience)
• Karl Spencer Lashley Award (2004, American Philosophical Society)
• Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2005, Society for Neuroscience)