PIPages
Labs

Srikanta Mishra

University of Texas at Austin, TX·Neuroscience

Hearing in childhood shapes language, learning and development, but scientists still know little about how the hearing system develops or what happens after common ear problems clear up. Two projects follow children over time to study listening development.

Fields

Neuroscience

Medicine & Clinical Research

Psychology

Topics

audiology

hearing science

pediatric hearing

Grants
2 known grants, through Jul 2029

What they work on

  1. Examine whether otitis media (OM), common in early childhood, affects the development of spatial listening and of energetic and informational masking after the ear problem resolves, by following children longitudinally.
  2. Measure sensitivity to frequency modulation and temporal gap detection in children with resolved OM to track lasting effects on basic auditory perception.
  3. Model listening and communication development after resolved OM using machine learning, with predictors such as OM history, hearing and cognition, combining laboratory and real-world measures.
  4. Determine how medial efferent sensitivity to temporal sound fluctuations develops in children, using sweep-tone otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), faint sounds produced by the inner ear.
  5. Characterize developmental changes in the temporal dynamics of efferent effects using OAE recordings and time-frequency signal analysis, testing the hypothesis that the brainstem shows developmental plasticity.

More about the research

One looks at the lasting effects of ear infections. The other looks at the brain's feedback control of the inner ear.

Why it matters

Evidence that children have lasting listening deficits after otitis media could support earlier identification and intervention for children whose hearing was affected. This could inform audiology, pediatrics and speech-language care. OAE-based measures of efferent function could become objective tests of hearing, may help predict susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss, and could guide better hearing-device algorithms.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Functional Consequences of Early Childhood Otitis Media

NIH · Aug 2024 – Jul 2029

Development of medial efferent mechanisms in children

NIH · Sep 2020 – Aug 2026

Closest labs

Ian Mertes

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Neuroscience

Determine whether medial olivocochlear (MOC) reflex strength, measured by contralateral inhibition of otoacoustic emissions, predicts whether normal-hearing adults report difficulty understanding speech in background noise.

Paul Forlano

CUNY Brooklyn College, NY·Neuroscience

Test whether sex steroids and melatonin regulate the inner ear's dopamine system by manipulating hormone levels in plainfin midshipman fish and measuring dopamine innervation and receptor gene expression.

Lisa Goodrich

Harvard University, MA·Neuroscience

Define how the transcription factor Gata3 controls c-Maf and Mafb through effects on chromatin, using assays of chromatin structure and subtype-specific gene expression in spiral ganglion neurons.

The school

University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.

More about University of Texas at Austin

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