Knowles Hearing Center Conference:  “Learning to Hear: The influence of experience and training on auditory skill.”

- October 21, 2011

 “Directing Neural Plasticity to Understand and Treat Speech and Hearing Disorders”

Dr. Kilgard will discuss recent advances in neural plasticity research and the implications of this research for understanding and treating speech and hearing disorders. Dr. Kilgard’s laboratory has developed an animal model of speech sound processing and demonstrated remarkable similarities between humans and animals. These similarities have made it possible to understand the effects of brain damage, genetic defects and hearing loss on speech sound processing at the level of individual neurons.  Dr. Kilgard’s laboratory has also developed a novel method that can be used in both humans and animals to direct highly specific and long lasting neural plasticity, which could be used to treat speech and hearing disorders.