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[AUDITORY] Seminar Announcement - May 9 - E.A.R.S. (Electronic Auditory Research Seminars)



Dear fellow neuroscientists,

 

Please join us on Tuesday, May 9 at 1:00 pm EDT (UTC-4) for the next edition of E.A.R.S. (Electronic Auditory Research Seminars), a monthly auditory seminar series focused on central auditory processing and circuits. 

 

Speakers:

 

Charles Anderson (West Virginia University): "Cell-type specific enhancement of deviance detection by synaptic zinc in mouse auditory cortex” 

A fundamental feature of sensory processing is the ability of animals to adapt to the current conditions in their the environment yet maintain their ability to detect novelty in the same environment. A correlate of this ability is a robust neuronal phenomenon called stimulus-specific adaptation, in which a repeated stimulus will result in smaller and smaller neuronal responses over time, but a deviant stimulus will still elicit robust responses from the same neurons. Recent work has established that synaptically released zinc is an endogenous mechanism that shapes neuronal responses to sounds in the auditory cortex. Here, to understand the contributions of cortical synaptic zinc to deviance detection of specific cortical neurons we performed wide field and 2-photon calcium imaging of multiple classes of cortical glutamatergic neurons. We find that intratelencephalic (IT) neurons in both layer 2/3 and layer 5 as well as extratelencephalic (ET) neurons in layer 5 all demonstrate deviance detection, however, we find a specific enhancement of this deviance detection in ET neurons that arises from ZnT3-dependent synaptic zinc in layer 2/3 IT neurons. Genetic deletion of ZnT3 from layer 2/3 IT neurons removes the enhancing effects of synaptic zinc on ET neuron deviance detection and also results in poorer acuity of detecting deviant sounds by behaving mice.

 

Dayo Adewole (University of Pennsylvania): "Tissue Engineering for Auditory Rehabilitation" 

Sensorineural hearing loss (SHL) affects an estimated 18% of the human population, with the World Health Organization projecting one in ten people with ‘disabling’ hearing loss by 2050. SHL occurs when cells within the auditory pathway degenerate or die (as a result of injury, disease, or aging) and is historically considered irreversible. Current clinical interventions to restore a degree of hearing following SHL use implantable devices that deliver electrical impulses to activate the user’s surviving auditory pathway (e.g.cochlear implants); ongoing challenges for these "auditory neuroprosthetics" include recreating complex sounds due to limited tonotopic resolution & maintaining performance over time as the auditory pathway degenerates. Advancements in tissue engineering may provide supplemental or alternative strategies to restore hearing by introducing living, functional cells to rebuild the auditory pathway. So-called "regenerative strategies" are an area of active investigation. This talk will provide a broad review of current auditory neuroprosthetics, explore potential future regenerative strategies in hearing restoration, and highlight how fundamental tissue engineering research at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center is being applied within this emerging field.

 

The seminar will be hosted on Zoom. You can access the seminars here: https://pennmedicine.zoom.us/j/95396120820. This link is also posted on our website https://sites.google.com/view/ears2020/home. The E.A.R.S. subscriber list is the ears-seminar google group, which you can join by emailing: ears2022+subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or visiting the following link: https://groups.google.com/g/ears2022.

 

This will be the last seminar before summer break – hope to see you there! 

 

With kind wishes,

Maria Geffen

Yale Cohen

Steve Eliades

Stephen David

Alexandria Lesicko

Nathan Vogler

Jean-Hugues Lestang

Huaizhen Cai