About

Alan Grinnell is a Distinguished Professor at UCLA, with a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University obtained in 1962. His academic career includes postdoctoral work at University College London from 1962 to 1964 and a faculty position at UCLA starting in 1964. He has held several leadership roles, including Director of the Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research Center from 1978 to 2001, Director of the Ahmanson Laboratory of Neurobiology from 1979 to 2004, and Chair of the Integrative Biology and Physiology Department from 1997 to 2001. In 2010, he became the Associate Dean of Life Sciences for Personnel. His research focuses on the adaptations of the auditory nervous system of echolocating bats that enable them to orient and hunt using echoes of emitted sounds as a substitute for vision. He studies bat echolocation behavior, feeding strategies, and the trophic influences between nerve and muscle governing the number, size, and strength of nerve terminals. His work also involves the regulation of neurotransmitter release and properties of presynaptic active zones. Recent projects include using Xenopus nerve-muscle cell cultures to analyze ionic currents and neurotransmitter release mechanisms, studying the regulation of transmitter release efficacy by muscle stretch mediated by integrins, and investigating the ability of a flying fox bat to shift between night vision and echolocation modalities. Additionally, he has a long-standing interest in the art and iconography of pre-Columbian ceramics from Central Panama.

Research topics

• Biochemistry
• Biology
• Biophysics
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Reflections on the neural processing of echoes for distance information in echolocating bats

  Journal of Comparative Physiology A · 2026-03-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Multiple neural specializations in echolocating bats enable target distance determination by measurement of the delay between many frequencies in the emitted FM signal and the same frequencies in returning echoes. In the neotropical lesser bulldog bat, Noctilio albiventris, a short constant frequency (CF) component preceding the FM sweep in emitted sounds is critical to the measurement of pulse-echo delay. The author reviews behavioral experiments that have a bearing on possible neural mechanisms for this role of the CF. Other experiments that substituted a descending sequence of brief pure tones for the normal FM sweep in evoking a normal approach phase behavioral response reveal interesting differences between N. albiventris and the purely FM bat Eptesicus fuscus in several parameters: the minimum number of pure tone frequencies necessary in the “FM sweep” for distance determination, the minimum effective frequency difference between steps, and the maximum duration of pure tone steps.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "Experimentally monitored calcium dynamics at synaptic active zones during neurotransmitter release in neuron–muscle cell cultures"

  2024-01-04

  peer-reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Experimentally monitored calcium dynamics at synaptic active zones during neurotransmitter release in neuron–muscle cell cultures

  European Journal of Neuroscience · 2024 · 4 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Biophysics
  • Chemistry
  • Biology

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  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Early milestones in the understanding of echolocation in bats

  Journal of Comparative Physiology A · 2018-04-23 · 11 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Echolocation: a personal historical perspective

  Canadian Journal of Zoology · 2018-02-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The remarkable ability of echolocating bats to use echoes of emitted sounds as a substitute for vision is one of the most fascinating stories in neuroethology. Based in part on personal experience, the author discusses key discoveries in the early decades after the discovery of the phenomenon by Griffin and Galambos in 1941. Advances in our understanding of this remarkable phenomenon illustrate well the importance of comparative approaches, technological advances, and the synergistic interaction between behavior and electrophysiology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Perspectives and Challenges for Future Research in Bat Hearing

  Springer handbook of auditory research · 2016-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• A History of the Study of Echolocation

  Springer handbook of auditory research · 2016-01-01 · 12 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Guild Structure and Niche Differentiation in Echolocating Bats

  Springer handbook of auditory research · 2016-01-01 · 26 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Bat Bioacoustics

  Springer handbook of auditory research · 2016-01-01 · 48 citations

  book
  PublisherDOI

• Auditory-visual information transfer in echolocating Egyptian fruit bats

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2016-10-01

  articleCorresponding

  Egyptian fruit bats have good vision but can also accurately echolocate relying on their well-developed auditory system. We asked two questions: 1. Can these bats acquire a mental image of an object using vision (or hearing) alone? 2. If such a mental image has been formed, can it be transferred from one sensory modality (e.g., vision) to another (e.g., hearing)? We trained the bats to first localize a rewarded object (an X) that was presented pseudo-randomly at either the left or right side using either vision (group 1) or hearing (group 2) alone. After only a few weeks, all experimental bats were able to perform these tasks. We then had the bats discriminate between a rewarded object (the X) and an unrewarded object (a circle) using either vision (group 1) or hearing (group 2) alone. Again, all bats mastered this task after only a few weeks of training. Finally, we tested if the same bats could also discriminate the objects using the other sensory modality (group 1: hearing; group 2: vision). After only a few sessions, the bats performed correctly suggesting that the bats can indeed transform a mental image that they obtained using one sensory modality to another modality.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01NS030673

  NIH · $4.5M · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• J. J. G. McCue

  17 shared

• Donald R. Griffin

  Charlottesville Medical Research

  13 shared

• Bruce Yazejian

  University of California, Los Angeles

  11 shared

• Stephen D. Meriney

  University of Pittsburgh

  9 shared

• Bo‐Ming Chen

  University of Glasgow

  8 shared

• Susumu Hagiwara

  8 shared

• Birgit Wolowske

  Utica College

  6 shared

• Xiaoping Sun

  National Institutes of Health Clinical Center

  6 shared