Lesica Lab

Our research group is focused on understanding hearing through study of the neural code — the activity patterns in brain networks that carry information about incoming sounds. We use a combination of large-scale in vivo electrophysiology and computational methods to study the “front-end” of hearing in the early auditory pathway.

We are interested in the network-level mechanisms that underlie complex perceptual phenomena, such as our ability to separate multiple sound sources and solve the so-called ‘cocktail party problem’. We seek to understand the function of these mechanisms during normal hearing and how their function is disrupted by hearing loss.

Our hope is that the data we collect in our experiments and the knowledge that we gain through our analyses will enable us to design improved assistive listening devices, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Check out …

a perspective on the transformative potential of AI in hearing healthcare

a blog discussing the challenges of hearing aid design

a News & Views about our recent research on neural coding and hearing aids

an article about the limitations of current hearing aids

Click here to view all of our research publications

 

The Team

Shievanie Sabesan, Nick Lesica, Yiqing Xia, Fotis Drakopoulos, Pawichaya (Opal) Suphinnapong, Pauline Maouad