9814275 Burleigh To hear properly, the brain must integrate information about sounds coming to the two ears. This binaural nature of hearing often means that sounds are laterally asymmetrical; acoustic properties like intensity, arrival time and waveform phase can be different between the two ears. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research builds on an unexpected and novel finding that such asymmetric input in the auditory system can have effects on motor control. This is an exploratory high-risk study because the initial finding has not yet been clearly established, but if it is, this will be a high-impact result for neuroscience and biomedical engineering. The objectives of this work are to develop tests to assay the hearing thresholds to binaural differences for subjects with auditory pathway disorders in the brainstem, to analyze walking gait and speech quality of normal and abnormal subjects during presentation of binaurally different sounds, and to develop a refined audiological assistive device to compensate for this auditory dysfunction. Programs in Biomedical Engineering and in Neuroscience are jointly funding this project because the impact of these results will be very high on understanding sensorimotor integration and on developing possible clinically effective electronic devices for certain motor control disorders. ***
