Professor Mike Burger

Professor Burger is a member of the Biology Department with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and anthropology, a PhD in zoology, and postdoctoral training in physiology and biophysics. Currently, his lab is working on two major projects: one is looking at how neuromodulatory systems in the brain influence the processing of sound on a very low level in the auditory system. The other is looking at development of specialization in the brain to process different frequencies of sound. His affiliation with Cognitive Science is based on his interest in what motivates behaviors. “For me, from the beginning of my career, I’ve always been interested in behavior, so while I study the action potential or a synaptic current, I really am interested in how those physiological phenomena relate to behavior. The Cognitive Science group [at Lehigh] gives the breadth of scientific approaches that can inform my physiological research.”