Christopher Sturdy, University of Alberta

Profile photo of Christopher Sturdy, expert at University of Alberta

Associate Professor Psychology Edmonton, Alberta csturdy@ualberta.ca Office: (780) 492-7843

Bio/Research

Chris Sturdy completed a B.A. in Psychology at the University of Windsor (Windsor, ON, Canada) in 1994 where he studied spatial memory in rats with Jerry Cohen. He then completed an M.A. in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2000 in Psychology at Queen's University (Kingston, ON, Canada) where he examined songb...

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Bio/Research

Chris Sturdy completed a B.A. in Psychology at the University of Windsor (Windsor, ON, Canada) in 1994 where he studied spatial memory in rats with Jerry Cohen. He then completed an M.A. in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2000 in Psychology at Queen's University (Kingston, ON, Canada) where he examined songbird bioacoustics, cognition and neuroscience with Ron Weisman. From 2000 to 2001, SturdyBlack-capped chickadee - Mackenzie Sturdy, circa age 4 worked at the Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC, USA) with Rich Mooney (Department of Neurobiology) and Duke University with Steve Nowicki (Department of Biology) where he examined the cellular basis of song production. In 2002 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB, Canada) and promoted to Associate Professor of Psychology in 2008. Sturdy continues to study songbird communication and cognition in an integrative fashion, combining several approaches to understand the biological and cognitive bases of underlying songbird acoustic communication.

Sturdy is a member of the BioCognition Unit and study the neuroethology of songbird acoustic communication. Sturdy uses several empirical approaches, from bioacoustic analyses of vocalizations, operant discrimination paradigms and field playback experiments to electrophysiological and neuroanatomical techniques as well as artificial neural network approaches, with the long-term goal of understanding the behavioural, cognitive and neural substrates underlying songbird vocal production and perception, auditory perception and cognition.


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