Hearing: from mechanisms to restoration technologies

Description

Hearing is not only an exquisite window to the world, for most of us, but also a vivid area of research on the physiological and neuronal sources of perception, and one of the priorities for modern medical research to improve treatments of wide-spread hearing impairments. This course proposes to give a theoretical and practical training to many of the major domains of hearing science and auditory pathophysiology. Lectures will cover the principles of acoustics, the biomechanics of the hearing and vestibular organs, their molecular components and the associated genetic defects that cause many forms of deafness, the principles governing the emergence of perception in the auditory system and the detection of abnormal hearing in its various instances. Participants will get hands-on experience implementing modern audiologic diagnoses based on the mastery of electrophysiological measures, get to use state-of-the art optical imaging methods to explore the coding of sounds in neurons, and be practically introduced to the bases of signal analysis from the acoustic to the neuronal domain, including modern deep learning based algorithm. 

Lectures will also cover, in depth, the main therapeutic avenues to address hearing impairments, ranging from cochlear implants to gene therapy methods. Students will also learn about fundamental neurophysiological properties of the circuits that process auditory information in the brain and how they are plastically modified by experience or pathological conditions. Finally, guest lectures will illustrate the progress of forefront research on hearing.

This course is aimed primarily at students or practitioners wishing to deepen their knowledge of research areas in hearing, but also at students wishing to approach genetics and modern neurophysiology in a concrete and practical way for the study of perception.