The goal of IHR is, first and foremost, to engage in international-class research on the brain mechanisms of hearing and associated cognitive and multisensory processes. The links to individual research strands below describe in more detail how that goal is being delivered.

Hearing research has traditionally focussed on the cochlea of the inner ear. But it has long been recognised that it isn’t just what we hear, but “what we do with what we hear” (Jack Katz, 2007) that contributes equally to effective human communication. The MRC Institute of Hearing Research pursues a strategy of basic and translational research into the ‘Auditory Brain’, which we broadly define as the study of all neural processing occurring at and above the level of the auditory nerve, and its perceptual and clinical consequences. This study includes analysis of the mechanisms of central auditory function, conducted using ever more powerful, multi-channel electrophysiological recordings, and the rapidly evolving neuroimaging techniques of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, we acknowledge the need to anchor these neurobiological observations in their appropriate behavioural context. This approach has led to major breakthroughs, as well as major challenges, in our research.

Some recent highlights include:

• Discovery of a pathway for high resolution auditory temporal processing from auditory nerve to cortex
• Discovery of the almost ubiquitous influence of the auditory cortex on the function of the lower auditory system, even in the unconscious brain
• Finding of neural forward masking, similar in magnitude to psychophysical data, in the auditory cortex
• Discovery that auditory learning may be effected through training with identical stimuli
• Introduction of ‘change’ stimuli as a preferred alternative to subtraction in neuroimaging
• Identification of the nature of auditory processing disorder
• Discovery of long-term changes in medial olivocochlear activity induced by auditory learning
• Discovery of links between the dynamics of binaural hearing and auditory disability

These and other breakthroughs are now being developed further for applications that will:

• Inform the design, fitting and (re)habilitation for hearing aids and cochlear implants
• Provide objective and automated measures of peripheral and central auditory function, even in the very young and behaviourally incapacitated
• Provide novel, auditory-learning-based treatments for hearing loss, APD and language impairments
• Decrease the auditory discomfort and perceptual masking during noisy MR scanning