The Institute of Hearing Research is a unit within the Medical Research Council, but also receives funding from the Chief Scientist Office and the Department of Health.

Nottingham University Section is housed within dedicated facilities at the University of Nottingham. The Regional Sections are based within NHS facilities; the Nottingham Clinical Section is located in the EENT Centre at the Queen's Medical Centre, and the Scottish Section is based at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

IHR's Mission and Strategic Review

• To engage in international-class research on the brain mechanisms of hearing and associated cognitive and multisensory processes
• To translate the results of our research into applied and clinical practice, and to be guided by those applications in the selection of future research projects
• To develop a work ethic and environment that is creative, nurturing, collaborative, fair, outward looking and flexible

Introduction

Significant hearing impairment affects one child in a thousand at birth, and more than one person in three by the age of 80. Brain deficiencies in analysing sounds provided by the ear are even more prevalent. The Institute of Hearing Research is a world-leading centre conducting multi-disciplinary research on the causes and consequences of these disorders, and on treatments that may alleviate them. This work creates research opportunities for post-graduate and post-doctoral research across a wide range of disciplines in science, medicine, and engineering.

The Institute has been a major contributor to international research. It has characterised physiological and psychoacoustical processes by which auditory analysis separates concurrent sources of sound (the ‘cocktail-party’ effect). It has completed large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal epidemiological studies of hearing in the adult and paediatric UK populations. It has identified causes and consequences of hearing loss in children. It has worked with the NHS to conduct trials of surgical treatments for “glue ear” in children, was sponsored by the Department of Health to evaluate the introduction of cochlear implants to the NHS, and is working with the NHS to optimise the effectiveness of hearing aid services.

In January 2004, the Institute embarked on an ambitious and exciting new programme of work focussing on The Auditory Brain. This work includes research on the human and animal auditory cortex, auditory attention, learning and development, hearing disability and handicap, hearing with cochlear implants and hearing aids, and measures of hearing impairment. The Institute will continue to pioneer the development of advanced instrumentation and data analysis for its own and other’s research. Spin-off from such development has included portable tests for obtaining measures of hearing sensitivity in babies and for obtaining hearing threshold levels on young children, and a system for the presentation of high-fidelity sound in the acoustically and magnetically hostile environment of a magnetic resonance scanner. Current projects include the development of other novel sound presentation systems and wireless recording of neural activity.

Regional Sections

The Institute’s two regional sections, in Nottingham and Glasgow, house over 30 staff, including scientists, and technical and administrative support staff. In these sections, MRC staff work on both fundamental and applied scientific projects and within each section additional health authority staff work in teaching hospitals where a mixture of scientific and clinical research is undertaken.