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C(SD)2 - Computational, Speech, Sensory, Development & Diseases Lab
[pronounced “CSD-two lab”]
Focus of Lab
Collaborative efforts in this lab investigate environmental and genetic influences on the normal and abnormal development of hearing and auditory processing disorders. Parallel projects in various species (humans, mice, chickens, and quail) attempt to uncover general principles of hearing development. Current research involves the effects of low-level heavy-metal poisoning, ototoxic drugs, noise, early experience, and genetics on the development of hearing acuity, attention deficits, and more complex auditory processing. Various methods of minimizing auditory perceptual disorders – such as stimulant medication, enriched rearing, and training and intervention– are investigated.
Computational Models of Disease Spread
See http://www.csd.jmu.edu/csdsquared/ for explanations and interactive visualizations of oral and breast cancer metastases, vaccination rates in developing countries, and immigration. This innovative method, called ‘constructed cartography,’ is basically some math from hearing science applied to very different purposes.
Animal Models of Genetic/Environmental Influences on Hearing
We investigate environmental and genetic influences on the development of hearing. Current research involves the effects of ototoxic drugs, early experience, nutrition, and genetics on the development of hearing acuity, attention deficits, and more complex auditory processing. We have bred two strains of quail that have high 
and low levels of distraction masking (the avian analogy of a trait that we see in children with ADHD). Collaborating with Dr. Ryals, we are exploring the effects of early hearing loss and its recovery through hair-cell regeneration in quail as a possibly useful animal model of early deafness and its treatment. Collaborating with Dr. Mark Gabriele of the JMU biology department, we are using a mouse model to investigate the roles of specific signally proteins (Eph receptors) on the development of hearing.
Human Studies of Sounds that are Distracting
Collaborating with Dr. Dan Halling in the Human Psychoacoustics Laboratory at JMU and with Dr. Bradley Kesser at the University of Virginia, we are investigating what makes sounds distracting. We are training participants with ADHD to be less distracted by unpredictable background sounds. We are investigating how people with newly functional hearing are able to avoid being distracted by those new inputs.
Personnel
Director: Lincoln Gray
Other Faculty:
Students:
- Kate Belzner, Au.D., Ph.D. Candidate
- Quintin Brubaker, Biology Undergraduate
- Kelly Chamberlain, Biology Undergraduate
- Jessica Green, CSD Undergraduate
- Sarah Kavianpour, Biology Undergraduate
- Bethany Magee, Au.D. Candidate
- Lauren McIntosh, Au.D. Candidate
- Jessica Miller, Au.D. Candidate
- Shannon Murphy, SLP Masters Candidate
- Lauren O'Baugh, CSD Undergraduate
- Whitney Powell, SLP Masters Candidate
- Bryna Rickenbach, Au.D. Candidate
- Daniel Shearer, CSD Undergraduate
- Brooke Stogner, Au.D. Candidate
Current Projects in the lab; sources of funding
- Co-Principal Investigator (M. Gabriele PI). Establishing complex auditory circuits: Molecular mechanisms and functional implications for treating the hearing impaired. Commonwealth Health Research Board (#1 proposal in VA in 2009). 7/1/2009-6/30/2011.
- Co-Principal Investigator, (B. Kesser, M.D., PI) Surgical Repair of Unilateral Congenital Aural Atresia, Richmond Eye and Ear Foundation, 2009.
- Hair Cell Regeneration – Functional Significance” NIH R01 DC001372 (B. Ryals and R. Dooling, P.I.s)
Opportunities to Participate in our Perceptual Research:
- If you (or your child) wish to help us understand how people might be distracted by unpredictable background sounds, please contact lgray@jmu.edu about opportunities to be a volunteer participant. Our experiments are computer games with sound. No sound is loud; most are very soft. We are particularly interested in volunteers with ADHD, dyslexia, hearing loss in one ear, the elderly with and without hearing aids, and in normal controls.
- Please visit http://csdsquared.cs.jmu.edu/InfraStruct/consentform.htm if you are an adult lay person in VA or MN or a security expert to provide your subjective judgments of infrastructure. You can do it first as ‘just looking’ but email graylc@jmu.edu to get a password so that your broad category of participant (but never your name) can be recorded.
- Please visit http://www.uth.tmc.edu/oto/ArtInstruction.htm if you are an adult lay person, professional artist, physician, other health-care professional, or medical student to provide your subjective judgments of portrait art (and find link to read about our studies into the ‘art of observation’.
