The University of Iowa Graduate College honors Karen Thompson with the D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize in the biological and life sciences. Thompson, who received her doctorate in biology in 2013, will be honored during a ceremony at the James F. Jakobsen Graduate Conference in March 2016.

To gain a better understanding of how sensory and motor neurons navigate the sensory cells of the inner ear, Thompson experimented on frogs, surgically transplanting their ears. Her dissertation, “Ear Manipulations Help Model Neuroplasticity Limitations,” shares her unique findings.

Transplantation of developing tissues has long been used to test the potential of developing brain tissues to interact with novel targets. While three-eyed frogs were first studied in the 1970s, Thompson’s study extended this work to the auditory system by transplanting ears to generate “three-eared” frogs.

By transplanting ears to new locations in the frog or by adding a third ear, Thompson created a novel situation to study how the brain adapts to a new sensory system. In addition, by removing a frog’s existing ear, she examined the influence an established sensory system has on the development of neurons in the brain. Sensory neurons convey sensory impulses from sensory organs toward the central nervous system, which includes the spinal cord and brain.

Her results indicate that auditory and visual systems appear to use similar molecular and physiological mechanisms to properly integrate information within the brain.