NIA grant to benefit hearing research

Frisina

The National Institute on Aging has awarded a second five-year $5 million Program Project Grant to the International Center for Hearing & Speech Research. A joint Center of Excellence created by the boards of the University and RIT in 1989, the center's purpose is to initiate and coordinate hearing, speech, and deafness research programs between the two institutions. The center's link is through the Medical Center's Division of Otolaryngology and RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The grant employs over 20 faculty and research staff at the University, NTID, and SUNY at Buffalo.

"We were very excited to receive this award to continue our parallel experiments involving human and animal subjects, which bring together scientists and clinical researchers at the University of Rochester, RIT, and the University at Buffalo," stated Robert D. Frisina, associate chairman of the otolaryngology division and co-director of this grant.

The grant--which is in effect through April 30, 2003--is going to be directed toward a better understanding of why people lose their hearing in their advanced years. Previous interdisciplinary studies have shown that several major auditory processing problems occur as people age. One is a loss of sensitivity to high-pitch sounds that takes place due to damage to the inner ear. Also, a decline in brain function contributes to a reduction in the ability to understand speech in the presence of background noise. In addition, brain dysfunction can result in a decreased ability to resolve the timing features of speech.

Animal model studies conducted with mice reveal some of the possible neural bases for these perceptual declines with age. First, a "rewiring" occurs with age for certain pathways in the brain used for hearing. Secondly, the concentration of certain proteins important for calcium regulation inside nerve cells of the central auditory system change with age. Thirdly, the size and extent of synapses decline with age in certain parts of the brain used for hearing.

During the next few years, the center will use the grant from the NIA (which is part of the National Institutes of Health) to build on these studies and delve into some new areas of research. It plans to place a greater emphasis on positron emission tomography studies with its human subjects and patients. These studies will delineate brain activity changes in auditory and attention regions that are altered as people grow older. The center also will carry out imaging of the calcium responsiveness of single nerve cells of the brain used for hearing. Such neuropharmacological studies of auditory nerve cells will allow the center to conduct prospective investigations of pharmacological interventions to improve the auditory processing of elderly subjects, initially in animal models.

Overall, the center's researchers hope to gain a greater understanding of these possible neural underpinnings that will bring them closer to eventual effective medical, pharmacological, or technological interventions to reverse, cure, or prevent sensorimotor problems in the aged population. Frisina added that "a major goal of the next five years is to generalize our studies of auditory aging to the other senses, such as vision and balance, to move closer to the NIA's goal of alleviating age-related sensory deficits."

Co-investigators at the Medical Center and in the College on this Program Project Grant include Frisina, Janet Holliday, James Ison, William O'Neill, and Joseph Walton.