JOVE Video: New Auditory Therapeutic Potential

This video, published by Morgan and Paolini in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE) on the 6th of this month, highlights new research into auditory therapy. The authors are working to perfect the technique of neural auditory prostheses, aiming to find areas of the brain’s cochlear nucleus that are best suited for detection of sound at specific frequencies. Electrical stimulation of the cochlear nucleus of the brainstem could be used as a therapeutic technique when cochlear implants are not an option. Classical conditioning techniques and heart rate monitoring are used to determine if the experimental animal can distinguish specific sound frequencies solely from electrical stimulation of the cochlear nucleus. This technique would allow a prosthetic device to bypass the infrastructure of a malfunctioning ear, giving auditory signals directly to the cochlear nucleus of the brainstem.

Video link courtesy of the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE). JOVE is a PubMed-indexed video journal whose mission is to increase the productivity of scientific research. Submit your work for publication in JoVE, the world’s first peer-reviewed, methods video journal.