Research

Career in Science and Medicine-Summer Internship

Habituation of the Acoustic Startle Response in Laboratory Mice

Figure by Lauer et al

No apparent Habituation was found across the blocks. However, the variability in the data suggested that habituation pattern analysis is necessary for all datasets involving ASR data in behavioral studies.

Independent Research and Study II (ENGR 492)

Exploration of necessity of Cortical and synaptic NMDA and GABA receptor activation for eLTP expression and/or auditory learning

Mowery Lab

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Figure 1 is adopted from Kotak et. al. 2017 and Mowery et. al. 2017

Pilot data demonstrate that blocking of NMDA receptors prevents potentiation and blocking of GABA receptors promotes eLTP expression in vitro.

Figure 2 is adopted from Mowery Lab

Pilot data suggests that NMDA is responsible in preventing auditory learning or eLTP expression.

Infusion of either NMDA or GABA following cannula implantation into the striatum or auditory cortex in live and awake gerbils during the behavioral experiments is performed to assess the ability of the animal to learn auditory discrimination tasks. No conclusive data has been collected yet. However, we hypothesize that in vivo experiments in live gerbils will produce similar results as observed during in vivo experiments.

Independent Research and Study I (ENGR 491)

Unilateral superior semi-circular canal dehiscence: A physiological basis for exploring the mild cognitive impairments associated with 3rd Window syndrome

Semi-Circular Canal Dehiscence (SCCD) has been reported in causing impairment in both the auditory and vestibular systems in humans. To understand the physiological and cognitive effects of such disorder, Mongolian Gerbils are used in this study as animal models where acute conductive hearing loss is introduced via surgery by creating a hole in the semi-circular canal.

Mowery Lab

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

After preliminary testing, the pilot data acquired earlier from one group of the gerbils that went through the third window surgery showed that there was no difference in d’ (performance metric) between before and after the surgery for the behavioral testing (figure 1).

For Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR), the pilot data collected by the lab earlier suggests that the auditory threshold increases post-surgery (figure 2). However, additional data is required to draw conclusions.

Although figure 1 and figure 2 give some insights into the behavioral and physiological changes in the gerbils after the third window simulation, it can not be concluded that the third window did not bring any change. More data will be collected in the future from this ongoing study to produce conclusive results.

Independent Summer Research 2019

Effect of Tone Duration in Masked Threshold for Gerbils

In quiet surroundings, hearing aid and cochlear implant devices can restore speech intelligibility. However, in noisy places like a restaurant or an airport, the majority of people with hearing loss still struggle to understand spoken words. Current hearing aids have been unsuccessful at restoring hearing in the presence of background sound (e.g, airport or party). Current hearing aids intend to correct impaired ears. However, hearing impairment changes both ears and brain. A necessary first step for designing better hearing aids is to examine how auditory brain health affects behavioral function in situations with background sound.

Changes in physiology should affect the central processing of auditory features in the brain. In particular, prior work shows that experience with hearing loss adversely affects the ability to hear out targets in situations with background sound. This may be due to widened neural filters or a reduced ability to combine information across neural filters or both. This project measures how the duration of target sound affects the ability of a normal-hearing animal to hear out the target when a background sound is present. To establish the experimental paradigm, Mongolian Gerbils, Meriones unguiculatus, were trained and behavioral data were collected on normal hearing Gerbils.

Based on the pilot behavioral data, the estimated threshold for temporal integration of target tone in the presence of a modulated background sound is at 100 ms.

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