Hearing Loss and Deafness
Hearing loss and deafness afflict approximately 15% of adults. Approximately one in three Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those older than 75 have significant hearing impairment. In many cases, loss in the ability to sense sound is modest, yet the person still struggles to make sense of what they are hearing. Importantly, people with hearing loss can withdraw and become socially isolated, which increases risk for depression and other behavioral health challenges. Research among our faculty on this topic spans model systems from rodents to nonhuman primates to humans and involves close collaborations between neuroscientists and neuro-engineers to develop new approaches to assist and restore hearing loss to enhance quality of life. At UC Davis, 6 faculty members from 3 departments and 3 centers work in this area.
Faculty studying hearing loss and deafness
| David P. Corina, Ph.D. | Cognitive neuroscience of language and cognition |
| William DeBello, Ph.D. | Adaptive plasticity and brain wiring |
| Katharine Graf-Estes, Ph.D. | Mechanisms that support early learning in infants from statistical regularities in language |
| Lee M. Miller, Ph.D, | Auditory Neuroscience and Speech Recognition |
| Gregg Recanzone, Ph.D. | role of the cerebral cortex in the perception of auditory signals and age-related hearing loss |
| Mitchell Sutter, Ph.D. | Neural mechanisms of sound perception and modulation by attention, decisions, actions |