The neurophysiology and neuropharmacology underlying age-related deterioration in temporal processing of complex acoustics features is the principal research focus in my laboratory. A secondary interest is the study of the neural mechanisms which can extract relevant signals separated in auditory space from noise maskers, e.g. the cocktail party effect. Initial studies are devoted to the inferior colliculus, a key midbrain nucleus which integrates neural information from a multitude of lower brainstem centers. Our long-term goal in these studies is to unravel those changes which are responsible for the auditory perceptual deficits associated with the peripheral and central aging in the auditory system. Auditory brainstem response forward-masking recovery functions in older humans with normal hearing.
Background noise improves gap detection in tonically inhibited inferior colliculus nuerons.
J. Neurophysiology in press. Age-related alteration in neural processing of temporal sound features in the inferior colliculus in the CBA mouse model of presbycusis. Symposium on Noise and Aging. Neural correlates of gap detection in the inferior colliculus of the young CBA mouse. J. Comparative Physiology.