Current Research Description

Hearing loss becomes prevalent more than ever due to the steady increase of our life expectancy (leads to the increase in age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis), and over-exposure to sound from sources like personal electronic devices (contributes to noise-induced hearing loss). The goal of our research is to investigate the neural mechanisms of hearing loss due to aging and noise trauma.  We aim to elucidate how the auditory nervous system processes sound information, and how such neural processing is disrupted under aging and noise-trauma conditions.  Our research utilizes whole-cell patch clamp recording technique in acute brain slices, as well as other multidisciplinary approaches including pharmacology, immunohistochemistry, molecular biology, optogenetics and behavioral assays.

We use mouse as the animal model to study the brain at different levels, from the target-specific differentiation of single ion channel receptors, to the mechanisms of Synaptic transmission process, cellular changes of auditory neurons, signal processing in neural circuits, and to behavioral alterations of hearing perception.  One of our current research focuses on the anatomy, physiology and function of a model synapse called the Endbulb of Held, which is the central terminal of the auditory nerve that is specialized in processing the temporal information of sound and is crucial for hearing.  We found that this synapse undergoes pathological changes (termed “synaptopathy”) during aging and noise trauma, and therefore is an ideal platform to study the underlying neural mechanisms.  Multiple projects are being developed to investigate various molecular targets and cellular signaling pathways that are potentially involved in the pathological changes.  Other research projects include the cellular mechanisms of aging in postsynaptic neurons that receive inputs from the Endbulb of Held synapses, glycinergic inhibitory neural transmission, as well as signal processing in neural circuits along the pathways of the auditory system.