Central Representation of Electroacoustic Stimuli. Cochlear implantation, initially only provided to profoundly deaf individuals, is now routine in people with substantial residual hearing. Although stimulation via a cochlear implant and hearing aid in the same ear has been shown to improve speech understanding, particularly in noise, and to increase the aesthetic quality of sound, almost nothing is known about the physiological mechanisms underlying these benefits. The broad aim of our project ....Central Representation of Electroacoustic Stimuli. Cochlear implantation, initially only provided to profoundly deaf individuals, is now routine in people with substantial residual hearing. Although stimulation via a cochlear implant and hearing aid in the same ear has been shown to improve speech understanding, particularly in noise, and to increase the aesthetic quality of sound, almost nothing is known about the physiological mechanisms underlying these benefits. The broad aim of our project is to address this deficiency by measuring the patterns of neural activity evoked by speech sounds across the tonotopic axis in the inferior colliculus and auditory cortex and assess the extent to which the pattern of neural activity allows discrimination between the different speech sounds.Read moreRead less
The development and testing of a device to enhance the application of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. This project aims to develop and evaluate a new device designed to substantially enhance the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation, a technology, which is increasingly being applied in the treatment of disorders such as depression, as well as in the study of normal and abnormal brain function.