2017 awarded research laboratories

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The Fondation Pour l’Audition is happy to announce the research projects supported in 2017 following its call for research proposals. Find out below the awarded laboratories!

News - Publié le 01/02/2017 - Mis à jour le 15/10/2018

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The Fondation Pour l’Audition aims to accelerate research and innovation for hearing disorders in France with the goal to better understand them and develop much-needed solutions and will support in 2017:

  • Dr. Mathieu Lavandier at the École nationale des travaux publics de l’État in Vaulx-en-Velin (France) for the project entitled “Speech2Ears: A predictive model to support hearing- aid processing restoring spatial perception for speech recognition in realistic environments”.

The aim of Speech2Ears is to facilitate new hearing-aid processing strategies, which could restore this spatial benefit, through the development of a binaural speech intelligibility prediction model that can account for individual hearing loss and hearing aid processing in complex, realistic scenarios, including reverberation and competing speech sources.

 

  • Pr. Arnaud Norena at the LNIA CNRS laboratory in Marseilles (France) for his project entitled “Homeostatic plasticity in the auditory centers after hearing loss”.

The goal of the project is to investigate whether this mechanism is involved in tinnitus and hyperacusis using complementary approaches, namely molecular biology (assessing the mechanisms of inhibition), electrophysiology (assessing neural activity) and pharmacology (modulating central inhibition). The project can provide a new and promising pharmacotherapeutic target to treat these very debilitating symptoms.

 

  • Dr. Michèle Studer from the Institut de Biologie en Valrose at the University of Sophia-Antipolis in Nice (France) for the project entitled “Genetic and functional analysis of normal and pathological auditory pathways in the embryonic and adult mouse system”.

The aim of the project is to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms involved in hearing deficits in human diseases and to identify new genes required in the formation of the auditory system and altered in genetic causes of deafness. Importantly, the identification of novel genes involved in different forms of hearing impairments will foster designing novel genetic screening, developing new algorithms for hearing aids and cochlear implants and ultimately improve the development of novel pharmacological-based for patients.

 

  • Pr. Frederic Venail at the University Hospital Gui de Chauliac in Montpellier (France) and Pr. Philippe Poignet from the LIRMM laboratory at the University of Montpellier (France) for the project entitled “Optimization of fusion imaging of real-time ultrasonography with computerized tomography for intracochlear navigation (OPTIFUSION)”.

Ultrasound (US) imaging is suitable to identify critical cochlear structures and fused CTscan / 3D ultrasonography images can be used with a sufficient accuracy. The project aims to develop a new tool to guide cochlear electrode array insertion using the fusion of US imaging and X-ray CT scan and evaluate the accuracy of the method. A software allowing real-time rendering of fused US-CT imaging enabling its use in a clinical setting will also be developed.