Seminars in Hearing Research at Purdue (SHRP)

Title: Age-Related Variation in the Cochlear Implant Electrode-Neuron Interface

Speaker: Kelly Jahn, Au.D., Ph.D, Postdoctoral Fellow

Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA

Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

Date: December 03, 2020

Time: 10:30 – 11:20 am

Zoom Info:  contact host

Abstract:

Cochlear implants (CIs) can improve auditory perception for children and adults with severe to profound hearing loss, but little is known about how to optimize clinical interventions for individual patients. In fact, children and adults receive largely the same CI programming strategies despite their divergent hearing histories and auditory development trajectories. Since CIs interface directly with the auditory nerve, knowledge of the physiological integrity of the spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) in individual CI users may assist in developing patient-specific programming recommendations. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that early deafened children with CIs likely have denser populations of viable SGNs than older adults. These age-related differences in the CI electrode-to-neuron interface portend several avenues for future investigation of novel programming parameters tailored to the pediatric population.

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https://purdue.edu/TPAN/hearing/shrp_schedule

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