Many auditory perceptual skills mature over a long time course (in humans), well into the teenage years. If hearing is disrupted during development, there may be long-lasting deficits in auditory perception and language acquisition. Surprisingly, maturation of the auditory coding properties that support late-emerging perceptual skills are largely unknown;what little we do know is based solely on recordings from anesthetized animals. This is also why our understanding of the effect of mild to moderate hearing loss on central auditory maturation is unsettled. To address these issues, I will examine functional development in awake animals for the first time, and explore how auditory coding properties are influenced by sensory experience. The central hypothesis is that moderate hearing loss during development disrupts coding properties in the auditory cortex (ACx), leading to measurable deficits in auditory perceptual performance. There are three related aims:
AIM 1 will determine whether developmental conductive hearing loss disrupts the perceptual abilities of adult gerbils. Animals will be tested on two tasks that, in humans, are known to have different rates of maturation and to be affected by hearing loss. These include detection of sinusoidal amplitude (sAM) and frequency modulated (sFM) signals.
AIM 2 will determine whether training on an auditory task during juvenile development can rescue normal perceptual behavior in animals reared with conductive hearing loss.
AIM 3 will characterize the normal rate of development of neural coding properties underlying the percepts examined in Aim 1, and will assess whether these coding properties are perturbed in a manner that correlates with perceptual deficits examined in AIM 1. Single unit recordings will be obtained from the ACx of awake animals during the period of development that follows cochlear maturation. The broad goals are to determine whether coding properties mature at different rates, as suggested by behavioral studies, and to determine whether sAM or sFM coding is vulnerable to early hearing loss. Together, these data will provide the first analysis of auditory coding in awake developing animals, and reveal whether moderate hearing loss disrupts both perceptual skills and the coding properties that support them.

Public Health Relevance

Profound hearing loss in children can produce long-lasting deficits in auditory perception and language acquisition, and it has been suggested that mild to moderate hearing loss, including that commonly associated with middle ear infections, might also impact auditory performance. To address this question, we will induce conductive hearing loss in developing animals, and study their behavioral performance and central auditory nervous system function as adults. Thus, this study will examine whether moderate hearing loss disrupts both perceptual skills and the neural coding properties that support them.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC009237-04
Application #
8301723
Study Section
Auditory System Study Section (AUD)
Program Officer
Platt, Christopher
Project Start
2009-09-25
Project End
2014-08-31
Budget Start
2012-09-01
Budget End
2013-08-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$307,814
Indirect Cost
$104,171
Name
New York University
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041968306
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10012
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Buran, Bradley N; Sarro, Emma C; Manno, Francis A M et al. (2014) A sensitive period for the impact of hearing loss on auditory perception. J Neurosci 34:2276-84
Ter-Mikaelian, Maria; Semple, Malcolm N; Sanes, Dan H (2013) Effects of spectral and temporal disruption on cortical encoding of gerbil vocalizations. J Neurophysiol 110:1190-204
Rosen, Merri J; Sarro, Emma C; Kelly, Jack B et al. (2012) Diminished behavioral and neural sensitivity to sound modulation is associated with moderate developmental hearing loss. PLoS One 7:e41514
Sarro, Emma C; Sanes, Dan H (2011) The cost and benefit of juvenile training on adult perceptual skill. J Neurosci 31:5383-91
Sanes, Dan H; Woolley, Sarah M N (2011) A behavioral framework to guide research on central auditory development and plasticity. Neuron 72:912-29
Sarro, Emma C; Rosen, Merri J; Sanes, Dan H (2011) Taking advantage of behavioral changes during development and training to assess sensory coding mechanisms. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1225:142-54
Sarro, Emma C; Sanes, Dan H (2010) Prolonged maturation of auditory perception and learning in gerbils. Dev Neurobiol 70:636-48
Rosen, Merri J; Semple, Malcolm N; Sanes, Dan H (2010) Exploiting development to evaluate auditory encoding of amplitude modulation. J Neurosci 30:15509-20