What is the focus of this project?

This project aims to explore age-related changes along the auditory pathway, with a focus on the central nervous system.  The project revolves around the hypothesis that the central nervous system has the capacity to modify itself functionally and structurally in response to experience and aging (known as cortical/neural plasticity), and thereby play an important role in maintaining effective auditory function with advancing age.  

Why are we interested in studying listening in noise, clutter, and reverberant environments?

As people age, they have considerable difficulty communicating in different types of environments, which include noise, reverberation (echoes in an enclosed space), and clutter.  While much is known about the changes in hearing sensitivity as we age that impact communication, relatively little is known about the neural mechanisms that deteriorate with advanced age.  The project explores the physiological and behavioral correlates of age-related hearing loss for encoding speech in noise, and proposes experiments to test how cortical plasticity could be directed to counter these age-related changes.