Past Events

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.

Aditi Gargeshwari, PhD
Waisman Center
December 12, 2025 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Processing of Binaural Cues: Psychophysical and Neural Perspectives

Lisette LeMerise
Waisman Center
December 5, 2025 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Assessing Auditory Cortical Region Differences Between Individuals with Down Syndrome and Healthy Controls with Quantitative Neuroimaging

Liz Ancel, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
150 Russell Laboratories
December 1, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Learn more about Prosem

In speech-language pathology, clinicians often conduct assessment and intervention tasks with children via live voice. When administering these tasks, SLPs may differ in their manner of delivery, even when the content of the task is the same. Based on previous research in child-directed speech (speech directed to children), variability between SLPs' manner of delivery potentially impacts children's language outcomes. However, many findings from existing research in child-directed speech have limited generalizability to clinical settings in speech-language pathology due to their focus on caregiver speech and broad, long-term language outcomes. To better understand the function and role of speech characteristics in clinical settings with children, this presentation will first describe the speech of 31 SLPs administering a common clinical task (sentence repetition) to an imagined adult listener and four imagined child listeners who differ in age and language ability. Then, we will analyze how three different SLPs' usage of adult-directed and child-directed speech impacted children's ability to repeat sentences accurately. The results demonstrate how SLPs' manner of delivery can impact children's language outcomes, which furthers the need for research connecting speech characteristics and child outcomes that encompasses a variety of clinical tasks and child populations.

Jared Cullen, B.S.
150 Russell Laboratories
November 24, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Alexander disease (AxD) is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by dominant gain of function mutations in the glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) gene, leading to protein aggregation, astrocyte dysfunction, white matter degeneration, and progressive neurological decline. Individuals with AxD frequently experience bulbar impairments, including dysphagia, feeding difficulties, compromised airway protection, and dysarthria, however these deficits have not yet been characterized in preclinical animal models. Our research assessed oromotor function in the CRISPR/Cas9-engineered GFAP+/R237H rat model, which carries the rodent equivalent of the severe and clinically prevalent human R239H mutation. To determine whether this model recapitulates clinically observed bulbar motor deficits, we conducted a series of baseline behavioral assays including tongue strength, mastication efficiency, swallowing function, and ultrasonic vocalizations to measure function directly related to swallowing and speech. Findings from this work establish the first evidence of oromotor dysfunction in an AxD animal model, paralleling bulbar motor impairments observed clinically in individuals with AxD. These results strengthen the translational relevance of the GFAP+/R237H rat model and its validity as a robust tool for future mechanistic studies and the development of therapeutic and/or rehabilitative techniques aimed at improving the bulbar function in Alexander disease.

Yuyu Zeng (Rustle), Ph.D.
Waisman Center
November 21, 2025 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Speech sensorimotor adaptation—adjusting articulation to counter altered auditory feedback—unfolds in a predictable direction. This talk demonstrates how that property can be leveraged to improve second-language vowel learning. Native Spanish speakers produced English /ɪ/ (“ship”) under altered auditory feedback that shifted perceived feedback toward or away from /i/ (“sheep”). Both groups adapted as expected, but only the toward-/i/ group produced more clearly differentiated vowels after the feedback was removed. Perceptual identification of the /i/–/ɪ/ contrast also became sharper across groups. These results show that leveraging the predictable direction of sensorimotor adaptation can refine non-native vowel production and perception.

Erik Jorgensen, Au.D., Ph.D.
150 Russell Laboratories
November 17, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Learn more about Prosem

Hearing loss is associated with increased risks of loneliness and depression. The mechanisms underlying this association are unknown. In this talk, we outline a possible hearing-related behavior framework for understanding how hearing loss may lead to negative social-emotional health outcomes. The framework posits that acoustic environments and perceptual abilities, including the effects of hearing loss and audiologic intervention, interact in complex ways to influence long-term well-being. We then provide preliminary 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.

Christian Stilp, PhD
Waisman Center
November 7, 2025 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Objects and events in the sensory environment are never perceived in isolation, but relative to surrounding stimuli. This is especially true in speech perception, where acoustic characteristics of surrounding sounds have powerful contextual influences on perception of speech sounds. In this talk, I will discuss two classic effects of surrounding spectral context on auditory perception: spectral contrast effects and auditory enhancement effects. I will show that speech sound categorization is exquisitely sensitive to both of these effects, which are related to each other at the individual differences level. I will review the neural mechanisms thought to underlie these effects and introduce data that seek to clarify where these effects occur in the auditory system. Finally, I will examine how these context effects shape speech perception for listeners with hearing impairment, investigating their interrelationship at the individual differences level as well. Together, this work points to promising future directions that may ultimately improve speech-perception-in-context by listeners with impaired hearing.

Junseo Cha, M.S.
150 Russell Laboratories
November 3, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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With innovations in gene-targeting therapy, cellular atlases have been widely used in other parts of the body to identify the pathogenesis of diseased organs and to search for potential target genes to cure such diseases. Accordingly, a cell atlas of vocal fold tissues has been constructed during different stages of the vocal fold wound healing process in FVB/NJ mice. After clustering, we identified a total of 23 major cell types, including epithelial, mesenchymal, endothelial, neural, and immune populations. Epithelial clusters were subdivided into secretory, basal, and suprabasal clusters, and immune cells were subdivided to identify myeloid and lymphoid cell populations. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were used to delineate enriched pathways for each of the subclusters to identify their roles in wound healing. Results show an acute inflammatory response mostly in immune cell populations and certain mesenchymal populations during the early stages of wound healing, followed by a high proliferation profile from epithelial populations as the recovery stage progresses. Our data show distinct trajectories of macrophage differentiation throughout the wound healing period, with complex cell-cell communication between epithelial, myeloid, lymphoid, and mesenchymal cell populations. These findings serve as foundational background for future research on vocal fold biology and successful wound healing.

Kevin Sitek, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
October 31, 2025 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The central auditory system is comprised of a number of subcortical and cortical brain structures. While non-invasive methods like MRI and EEG have enabled detailed study of the human auditory cortex, imaging the deep, small subcortical auditory nuclei remains challenging. Fortunately, advances in non-invasive imaging are facilitating research into the entire human auditory system and how it's involved in critical behaviors like speech communication. In this talk I’ll present my contributions to human auditory neuroimaging, including publicly available anatomical atlases of the subcortical auditory structures, their function, and the connectivity of the auditory pathway. I’ll then discuss recent work using these methods to probe auditory–striatal connectivity and its role in sound category learning. Finally, I’ll show how the EEG frequency-following response can provide insights into auditory–motor integration, with implications for speech production and feedback processing. Overall, this research advances our understanding of the human auditory system as a distributed network supporting complex behaviors, highlighting the value of multimodal neuroimaging in bridging brain structure and function.