Past Events Category: Brains and Bagels

Sara Misurelli, Ph.D., Au.D., CCC-A
Waisman Center
April 17, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050 2.5 billion people will experience hearing loss (HL), with 700 million requiring treatment. Comprehensive hearing evaluations, including word recognition tests (WRTs), are recommended for individuals with HL. While WRTs are a vital component of these evaluations, the availability of validated word lists in a variety of languages, and trained interpreters to score patient responses, is limited. Here our development process and solutions for addressing the lack of WRTs in non-English languages will be presented, using Hmong, a language in which word lists were not available as a case example. Our work involves four phases: 1) creating four professionally recorded phonetically-balanced monosyllabic word lists in White Hmong dialect, 2) validating the word lists, 3) surveying audiologists throughout the U.S. to gauge interest in and feasibility of using non-English word lists, and 4) developing an AI-automated scoring system for Hmong WRTs to improve accessibility and clinical utility. Together this work provides critical insights to barriers, opportunities, and solutions for improved access to equitable hearing health care.

G. Nike Gnanateja, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
April 10, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The fast-fluctuating components of speech with frequency modulations close to the center frequency of the auditory filters, known as temporal fine structure (FS), and the slower varying amplitude modulations, called the envelope (ENV), are both crucial for speech perception. FS is particularly vital for understanding speech in noisy environments. While FS processing is susceptible to even minor auditory system damage, current hearing rehabilitation approaches often overlook the importance of providing better access to FS for individuals with hearing loss. I will discuss a new accessible speech-based assessment approach for evaluating an individual's ability to utilize speech FS in challenging listening conditions. I will demonstrate how the validity of the assessment approach and the applicability of this approach across different listening conditions. These insights have significant implications for the assessment of speech FS processing and the development of speech processing strategies in hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Hung-Shao Cheng, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
March 27, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Sensorimotor adaptation, learning from errors in sensory feedback, is increasingly positioned as a potential motor learning mechanism to be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech that may improve speech intelligibility. However, one barrier for translating sensorimotor adaptation from laboratories to clinics is that individuals with acquired motor speech disorders who may benefit from such interventions are generally older than the typical age range that past studies of speech sensorimotor adaptation focuses on, and it is possible that aging may impact sensorimotor adaptation potentially due to age-related influences on sensory acuity and motor control ability. In this talk, I will present a study that examined 1) age effects on auditory and somatosensory acuity and 2) the extent to which age, sensory acuity, and/or motor variability predicted adaptation. Results indicate that despite age-related declines in hearing thresholds and tactile acuity of the tongue, older adults were associated with better vowel formant discrimination acuity. Critically, aging did not affect the magnitude of adaptation to the non-uniform formant perturbation. Participants with less motor variability were associated with larger adaptation. These findings support the feasibility that sensorimotor adaptation can be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech in older adults.

Erik Jorgensen, AuD, PhD, CCC-A
Waisman Center
March 20, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Hearing aid users commonly report changes in environmental soundscape perception following hearing aid fitting, yet little work has systematically addressed how hearing loss and amplification alter the subjective experience of everyday sounds. We present a series of experiments examining these effects using perceptual attributes drawn from the international standard soundscape model. Participants rated sounds along these attributes across several contexts: single sounds evaluated in the lab and in the real world, and a variety of virtual urban soundscapes evaluated in the lab. Results indicate that listeners with hearing loss rate environmental sounds less positively than listeners with normal hearing across attributes. Hearing aids partially restore these ratings, though effect sizes are modest. We also examine the relative contributions of acoustic signal properties and semantic sound knowledge to attribute ratings. Together, these findings lay groundwork for understanding how hearing loss and amplification shape everyday soundscape perception, and demonstrate complementary methodological approaches for investigating these effects.

Lukas Suveg, Au.D.
Waisman Center
March 13, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Spatial separation of target and competing speech can improve the accuracy with which listeners, including those with bilateral cochlear implants, identify the target speech. Even if measurement of this benefit were implemented in routine clinical practice, behavioral measures like percent correct scores are not designed to provide insight into the momentary accumulation of perceptual salience of auditory stimuli that informs the ultimate judgment regarding the target speech. In this study, we adapted the “visual world paradigm,” wherein eye-gaze was monitored as participants selected, on a computer monitor, the image representing a spoken target stimulus. This novel study was designed primarily to investigate the effect of target-masker spatial configuration on certainty of target identity. Eye gaze behaviors unfolding over the time course of target determination were measured along with time to decision and percent correct, to test the hypothesis that spatial separation of a target and masker increases the certainty with which targets are identified. In addition to results from 20 typically hearing listeners, I will share preliminary data from the initial bilateral cochlear implant recipients enrolled in this ongoing study.

Robert Fettiplace, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
March 6, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Sound transduction in cochlear hair cells arises by activation of mechanotransducer channels composed primarily of transmembrane channel-like protein 1 (TMC1). We have found that mutations in Tmc1 cause hair cell death and deafness in mice by postnatal day 21. However, mechano-transduction is normal in the first postnatal week. Our goal is to understand what triggers apoptosis, death of the hair cells, and deafness in these mouse mutants. I shall show that in all Tmc1 mutants studied, there was a reduction in the density of the PMCA2 Ca2+ pump in the outer hair cell stereocilia. This leads to an increase in cytoplasmic Ca2+ which deleteriously affects mitochondrial function. The results imply a connection between stereociliary PMCA2 density, hair cell apoptosis and deafness.

Bobby Gibbs, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
February 20, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Speech contains a signature unique to each talker which is found in the co-occurring changes in frequency and amplitude over time known as spectrotemporal modulations. In a previous study, older listeners with hearing impairment relied on a similar range of spectrotemporal modulations as their peers with typical hearing to "glimpse" target speech in a competing talker background. However, hearing impairment led to greater susceptibility to interference in non-target modulations associated with the competing talker. My lab has generated preliminary data that explores how simulations of altered neural encoding through a cochlear implant affects the utility of spectrotemporal modulations in a competing talker paradigm (coordinate-response measure sentences filtered into different modulation regions or “spectrotemporal bubbles”). The hypothesis is that broadened auditory filters due to increased spread of excitation (manipulated via the vocoder simulation filter slope) leads to poorer utilization of target modulations and increased susceptibility to interference from non-target modulations. Further, we are exploring how spectrotemporal modulation sensitivity in quiet predicts which modulations lead to glimpsing or interference in noise. This work will inform modulation-based source separation algorithms tailored to the unique listening strategies that occur with altered neural encoding.

Matt Banks, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
February 13, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

How consciousness emerges from the complex of interconnected networks in the brain is one of great unsolved mysteries in science. We seek to gain insight into this question by studying what changes in the brain during loss, recovery, and altered states of consciousness in neurosurgical patients implanted with intracranial electrodes while being evaluated for seizure resection surgery. We identify signatures of these changes by identifying common changes in brain activity and connectivity during sleep and anesthesia, two conditions in which consciousness is lost reversibly. In addition to elucidating the neural correlates of consciousness, our work is relevant to monitoring depth of anesthesia, and in the diagnosis, management and prognosis of pathological states of consciousness including central sleep disorders, delirium, vegetative or minimally conscious states, and coma.

Gunnar Quass
Waisman Center
January 30, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

TBA

Erik Jorgensen, Au.D, Ph.D., CCC-A
Waisman Center
January 23, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Hearing loss is robustly associated with increased risks of loneliness and depression. The mechanisms underlying this association are unknown. Whether interventions such as hearing aids reduce risk of negative psychosocial health outcomes is equivocal, but the research is limited. In this talk, we outline a possible hearing-related behavior framework for understanding how hearing loss may lead to negative psychosocial health outcomes. Rooted in auditory ecology, we posit that hearing loss leads to negative psychosocial health outcomes due to mismatches between perceptual abilities and auditory demands of listeners, such that hearing loss differentially effects psychosocial health dependent on soundscapes listeners experience. We then provide empirical evidence testing this theory. Our results provide support for our hypothesized pathway from hearing loss to depression; however, the results also suggest that hearing aid use may change daily life behaviors in fundamental ways that call into question traditional philosophies of hearing aid benefit and outcome.