Hearing Loss and Speech-in-noise Hearing Difficulty

Dr. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University professor and Director of Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute discusses the common condition of speech-in-noise difficulty and the breakthrough research conducted over the last decade that suggests that damage to cochlear synapses, the connection between cochlear hair cells and auditory nerve fibers, plays a central role in this condition. She talks about the social and cognitive impact of hearing loss, recent advances that helped to identify cochlear synaptopathy as an underlying cause, and a specific update on Otonomy, the only company with a drug treatment in clinical trials that offers potential for repair.

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University professor and Director of  Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience InstituteBarbara Shinn-Cunningham became the Director of the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute in 2018. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, she spent over twenty years on the faculty of Boston University (first in Cognitive and Neural Systems, and later in Biomedical Engineering). Her innovative work in auditory neuroscience has been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and the Vannevar Bush Fellows program. She has held numerous elected and appointed leadership positions in professional organizations such as the Association for Research in Otolaryngology and the Acoustical Society of America, and serves as on numerous advisory boards within both academia and industry.