Research scientist studies age-related hearing loss with rats

$1.6 million grant to help study

Age-related hearing loss in rats may help humans in the long run.

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At the School of Medicine, Donald Caspary, a professor of pharmacology, received a five-year, $1.6 million grant to head a project that looks at the way the brain changes with age-related hearing loss in rats.

“What we’re doing is using an animal model to try to see how the brain changes how we age in the auditory system,” he said. “As we lose hair cells from the area, the brain tries to compensate for that and undergoes a number of changes.”

By studying the changes, Caspary hopes to develop some drugs to help with hearing loss. He said that if an older adult with a hearing problem wanted to go out in a social environment, that person could take a pill that would help them to hear for a few hours.

Jeremy Turner, research assistant professor of pharmacology, said age-related hearing loss is worse than expected because of age and changes in the brain.

“As you get older, [you] tend to experience certain problems being able to process sound information,” he said. “And that seems to be not just a function of their hearing loss at their ear, but seems to be partly a function of what’s going on in their brain.”

The grant is funding the project for the next five years. Larry Hughes, professor of surgery, division of otolaryngology, said they have found interesting data about age-related hearing loss from the experiments conducted so far.

“Of course every time you do an experiment, it really suggests several other experiments that need to be done,” he said, “So in that respect it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

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The project uses rats, but chinchillas and gerbils were also an option. Chinchillas have a very similar hearing range to humans, but they live too long for one group to study them, Turner said.

“People who have studied auditory cortex have often chosen rats because their brains are larger than mice so it’s easier to do manipulations and it’s easier to do surgeries,” he said.

Reporter Lindsey J. Mastis can be reached at [email protected]