Bharadwaj Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2025

Physiological determinants of suprathreshold deficits in sensorineural hearing loss

Project Summary/Abstract Current assessments and treatments for hearing loss focus on restoring hearing sensitivity and speech audibility through amplification. Yet, hearing-aid users struggle to understand audible speech, especially in environments with background noise. Little is known about the precise physiological mechanisms that contribute to the challenge of being able to “hear, but not understand.” Conventionally, such suprathreshold deficits are attributed to reduced cochlear frequency selectivity (i.e., broadened filter tips) or cognitive factors like attention and memory. In contrast, emerging evidence from animal models of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and preliminary data…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.