Page 54 - Fall2020

DICK FAY AND GOLDFISH
work so that it would further help auditory neuroscientists understand vertebrate hearing. Dick was not able to follow this path, and so the purpose of this article is to describe the breadth of these studies, with hope that some future investigators will be stimulated to bring together all of Dick’s ideas and move forward from them, perhaps doing a similar range of studies in another interesting species. We should mention that Dick, who is a close friend of the three of us, has seen and approved this article and has given us valued insights into some of his thinking.
About Dick Fay
Dick retired in 2011 from Loyola University Chicago (IL) where he was a distinguished professor of psychology and a long-time member of the fabled Parmly Hearing Institute. Sisneros (2016) has provided an intriguing and thorough biography of Dick and his contributions, so they will not be included here. Dick has been a member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) for more than 50 years. He has an ASA Silver Medal in Bioacoustics, chaired the Animal Bioacoustics Technical Committee, and was associate editor of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
As a graduate student working in the laboratory of Ernst Glen Wever (see acousticstoday.org/7408-2) at Prince- ton University (NJ), Dick discovered that a conditioned measure of respiration by the goldfish provided a reli- able, valid, and relatively noninvasive measure of the fish’s ability to process sound (Fay, 1969). The condi- tioned respiration response was a change in respiration evoked by a mild electric shock that was intermittently paired with a sound presentation. The sound presen- tation would, over a short period, elicit a change in respiration not unlike that elicited by the shock. Over several years, including a postdoctoral year with Georg von Békésy, the 1961 Nobel Laureate, at the University of Hawai’i (see acousticstoday.org/7302-2), Dick refined this technique and started to integrate the behavioral measures of auditory function that it provided with recordings from the auditory nerve of the goldfish. His work in Hawai’i with von Békésy (Fay, 1973, 1975) and later at the Parmly Hearing Institute at Loyola University Chicago and the Marine Biological Laboratories (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA, was heavily influenced by an almost 50-year (and still going!) friendship and collaboration with Acoustics Today editor, Art Popper (Figure 2). This
collaboration is discussed in Fay and Popper (2014) and Popper and Fay (2016).
How Dick Met the Goldfish!
Dick Fay first encountered the goldfish as a graduate stu- dent at Connecticut College (New London), and it was the subject of his first publication (Fay, 1969). In decid- ing to work on goldfish, Dick picked a species that is a member of a taxonomic group, the Otophysi (or Ostari- ophysi) that have anatomical adaptations that enhance hearing capabilities compared with most other species from other taxa. Selecting the goldfish because it hears well was, however, not the basis for choosing goldfish for study. Instead, Dick says in a video presentation (see bit.ly/3aeJOnE) that this was because he could buy them for 50 cents in any Woolworths. Other reasons for selecting goldfish were that they are very hardy and able to survive the rigors of research and handling by a young investigator. And, indeed, it was not until the work of Jacobs and Tavolga (1967), which probably was being done at about the same time as Dick was starting out
Figure 2. Dick Fay and Art Popper in the Parmly Hearing Institute Library along with former students of one or both. Sheryl Coombs and Peggy Walton were graduate students with Art and then postdocs, and then long-time collaborators with Dick. Michaela Meyer was comentored by Dick and Art. David Zeddies was a postdoc first with Dick and then with Art. Zhongmin (John) Lu was a graduate student of Dick’s and a postdoc with Art. Joseph Sisneros collaborated with Dick. Seated, left to right: Sheryl Coombs, Dick Fay, and Art Popper. Standing, left to right: Peggy Edds-Walton, Michaela Meyer, David Zeddies, John Lu, and Joseph Sisneros.
54 Acoustics Today • Fall 2020