The Heinz lab uses a cross-species approach to understand and quantify relations between the physiological and perceptual effects of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL).

Three overall Aims in the lab are 1) to quantify the effects of various subtypes of SNHL on neural coding in single-unit auditory-nerve responses to simple and complex sounds, 2) to develop and validate non-invasive diagnostic and neural-coding characterizations of various subtypes of SNHL, and 3) to harmonize cross-species data to facilitate development of AI-driven models to relate anatomical, physiological, and perceptual effects of SNHL to support precision auditory neuroscience/audiology.

Technical Approaches

• Single-unit neurophysiology
• Novel spike-train analyses in perceptually relevant frameworks
• Non-invasive physiological assays-diagnostic development
• Electroencephalography (EEG)
• Pre-clinical models of SNHL
• Behavioral testing in chinchillas
• Cochlear immunostaining
• Computational modeling
• Cross-species translation studies

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