Research at the UC Irvine Cochlear Implant Center

Under the direction of the world renowned Cochlear Implant researcher, Fan-Gang Zeng, Ph.D., ground breaking cochlear implant research is ongoing at UC Irvine. Patients from all over the U.S. are participating in the innovative research designed and implemented at UC Irvine. These ongoing projects include:

• Developing coding strategies to improve the listening to music
• Coding strategies to eliminate tinnitus. UC Irvine researchers are the first to successfully program a special coding strategy specifically for elimination of tinnitus (ringing in the ears) in a patient undergoing cochlear implantation for tinnitus.
• Using ultra-high rate stimulation to closely mimic the stimulation that occurs in the normal cochlea.
• Innovative coding strategies for better understanding of speech in noise.
• Comparison of patients with bilateral cochlear implants to those with a cochlear implant on one side and a hearing aid on the other.
• Developing strategies for a cochlear implant sound simulator

    Click here for more research information at Dr. Zeng's laboratory website.

Other ongoing cutting edge collaborative research at UC Irvine

• Collaboration with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Dr. Andrei Shkel, on the world's first implantable vestibular implant (a device to replace the balance function).
• Collaboration with Drs. Li and Bachman at the Integrated System Technology Solutions Laboratory at UC Irvine for design of a new generation of cochlear implants
• Collaboration with UC Irvine Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) Center Micromechanics Laboratory, Dr. William Tang, on the design of a new generation of cochlear implant electrode.
• Collaboration with world-renowned Auditory Neuropathy researcher, Dr. Arnold Starr, on understanding and treating auditory neuropathy. Dr. Starr is the first researcher to discover the cause of auditory neuropathy. See here for story.

The Cochlear Implant Research Team is part of the Center for Hearing Research at UC Irvine. Members of the Hearing Research Team are listed below. For more information on the Center for Hearing Research click here

Bruce G. Berg
Associate Professor, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: perception of complex sounds; mathematical modeling of psychophysical and physiological auditory processes.

Anne L. Calof
Professor, Anatomy & Neurobiology

Interests: Molecular analysis of nervous system development and regeneration using transgenic mouse models; neural stem cells

Karina S. Cramer
Assistant Professor , Neurobiology & Behavior

Interests: We study the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie formation of neural circuitry in the auditory system during embyrogenesis, and we examine how these mechanisms operate during plasticity.

Nicole Gage
Assistant Researcher, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: Neural substrates of human speech and language.

Gregory S. Hickok
Professor, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: We use a variety of methods (fMRI, lesion, TMS) to map brain systems supporting speech and language processing, in both hearing and deaf populations.

Leonard M. Kitzes
Professor, Anatomy & Neurobiology

Interests: Physiology and development of the auditory system.

Virginia Mann
Professor, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: Reading ability: phoneme awareness, developmental dyslexia, phonological skills, early intervention precocious readers speech perception: context effects, cross-linguistic comparisons.

Raju Metherate
Associate Professor, Neurobiology & Behavior

Interests: Mechanisms of auditory cortex physiology, development and modulation.

Kourosh Saberi
Associate Professor, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: Cortical bases of sensory and perceptual processes.

Arnie Starr
Research Professor, Neurology, Neurobiology & Behavior, Cognitive Sciences

Interests: We study altered auditory processes in normal subjects and in 1) auditory neuropathy, a disorder of auditory nerve function in the presence of normal hair cell functions; 2) auditory memory and attention and changes with aging and dementias. We use physiological brain potentials measures of auditory pathway activity from the hair cell to auditory cortex to localize the site of change in the auditory pathway.

Norman M. Weinberger
Professor, Neurobiology & Behavior

Interests: Our goals are to understand the acquisition, retention and representation of information in the primary auditory cortex that underlies behavioral memory. We use a multi-level approach: behavioral, systems, circuits and cells. We are currently studying specific memory traces in auditory cortex and behavioral memory induced during both learning and by activation of the cholinergic nucleus basalis, and the new field of memory codes, the latter appearing as tuning shifts that encode the magnitude of learned behavioral importance of sounds.

Jack Xin
Professor, Mathematics

Interests: Fronts in heterogeneous media, ear modeling, and sound signal processing.

Fan-Gang Zeng
Professor, Otolaryngology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, Biomedical
Engineering, and Cognitive Sciences

Interests: Use systems and modeling approach to understand how the ear and the brain work together to process sounds, including human speech and music. Develop and design innovative prosthetic devices and training procedures for people who have lost hearing and balance functions.