1992 — 2002 |
Walton, Joseph P |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Animal Neurophysiology @ Rochester Institute of Technology
A substantial number of aged listeners have considerable difficulty in hearing and understanding speech: about half of the people of the United States who are at least 75 years old have this problem, called presbycusis, which seriously impairs communication. The problem is very severe when the listening environment is noisy, with competing sound sources in different locations. Two physiological deficits are responsible for presbycusis. One is a sensory loss in the inner ear; the other is determined by aged related changes in the central auditory system. The former results in a lowered audibility of acoustic input, the second, we hypothesize, results in an inability to follow the rapid fluctuations in amplitude that characterize the speech signal, and to accurate assign them to locations in space. In Project 3 we will search for the neurophysiological correlates of temporal and binaural deficits by characterizing neuronal responses in two key auditory centers, the cochlear nucleus and the inferior colliculus. We will determine whether there are age-related declines in the ability of these neurons to encode temporal signal in noise maskers at different locations. These signals include gaps in noise carriers and sinusoidally modulated tones and noise, presented in control quiet conditions or in background noise. We will examine the possible influence of known age-related changes in the chemical inhibitory systems (GABA and glycine) by examining how antagonists of these neurochemicals might simulate the aged neurons bit in young animals in which these agents are applied to the cells by microiontophoretic techniques; and with Project 4 we investigate the hypothesis that the primary cause of the age-related changes is loss of calcium regulation. The subjects are two models of presbycusis, the C57Bl and the CBA mouse, the first developing a sensory neural loss early in adult life while the second shows little evidence of sensory loss but was shown in our previous work to have substantial losses in temporal processing in later life. The long term objective of this research is to elucidate the physiological basis of presbycusis and its anatomical and neurochemical substrate, with the goal of developing novel and effective treatment modalities for this serious problem.
|
0.911 |
1997 |
Walton, Joseph P |
R03Activity Code Description: To provide research support specifically limited in time and amount for studies in categorical program areas. Small grants provide flexibility for initiating studies which are generally for preliminary short-term projects and are non-renewable. |
Aged Auditory System: Inhibition and Temporal Processin @ University of Rochester
The general significance of the present study is spurred by the fact that the prevalence of communication difficulties increases dramatically with age and that by the year 2030 the elderly population will grow to about one-fifth of the U.S. total population. As an individual increases into and past the sixth decade of life, one of the consequences of aging is the gradual deterioration in auditory sensitivity, coupled with changes in central neurophysiological processes. The goal of this research is to search for neurophysiological mechanisms underlying known deficits in temporal processing. At the single cell level encoding of temporal acuity is mediated in part, by inhibitory neurotransmitters which are known to undergo an age-related decline in the auditory midbrain. The proposed experiments will manipulate the effects of specific inhibitory neurotransmitters which are known to be critical in determining response properties in the inferior colliculus, the major obligatory nucleus for ascending auditory information in the brainstem. It is hoped that the following specific objectives will provide new insight into the auditory deficits associated with presbycusis, eventually leading to effective treatment of sensorimotor problems in the elderly.
|
0.958 |
2007 |
Walton, Joseph P |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Animal Single Unit and Evoked Potentials Neurophysiology @ Rochester Institute of Technology
The long-range objective of this Project is to examine neural processing of complex sounds and to uncover the biological correlates of presbycusis, the difficulty in understanding speech in poor listening conditions that develops with advancing age. In everyday listening environments, the elderly have the greatest difficulty understanding speech when the background noise and the speech signal are competing for similar spectral and temporal processing neural channels, as in the case for speech in social situations. A central component in all the proposed experiments is the increasing acoustic complexity of the background noise in order to more closely simulate natural listening conditions of the presbycusic listener. We will measure single unit responses and near-field potentials from the auditory midbrain of young adult, middle-aged and old CBA mice, and on temporal acuity as affected by two types of variables, namely, age-related alterations in auditory midbrain neuropharmacology and age-related deficits in spatial hearing. The first set of experiments test the hypothesis that modifying the action of neurotransmitters critical to auditory function and known to change with age will result in temporal processing deficits in complex spatial listening environments as measured by gap encoding in the inferior colliculus (IC). We will test the effects of chronic blockade of GABA circuits in the IC, and on acute blockade of serotonin receptors using microiontophoresis. The third hypothesis involves both binaural and temporal processing in quiet and background noise and predicts and predicts that the neural substrates of binaural gap temporal encoding of periodic amplitude modulation (AM) are linked to voltage gated potassium channels that are heavily represented in the auditory brainstem. On both theoretical and empirical grounds and consistent with our pilot data, we assert that they will be involved in neural synchrony and fast spiking, important mechanisms for encoding AM. We will test this prediction using electrophysiological measures from mice which lack these channels who should show deficits in temporal coding at high AM rates that correspond to those observed in the aged IC. We envision that the proposed studies will provide new insights into the neural deficits associated with presbycusis, eventually leading to effective interventions or treatments.
|
0.911 |
2016 — 2020 |
Walton, Joseph P |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Animal Core @ University of South Florida
ABSTRACT/SUMMARY ? Animal Core-001 Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) ? presbycusis ? is a significant Public Health issue and the number one communication disorder and neurodegenerative condition of our aged population; and ranks as one of the top three chronic medical conditions, along with arthritis and cardiovascular diseases. Although much has been learned, the search is on for biomedical treatments that prevent, slow down or reverse the consequences of ARHL. In fact, there are no FDA-approved drugs to treat sensorineural hearing loss, despite a prevalence of over 40 million people in the US alone. Furthermore, approximately 30% of those listeners complain of tinnitus, i.e., sound perception in the absence of acoustic stimulation. The scope of the Animal Core will support the other projects to delineate the functional effects on neural correlates of complex sound processing using different modulators of presbycusis. More specifically, Core-001 (Animal Core) of this Program Project is responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and aging mice and rats; and in a timely manner provides experimental subjects for Projects 2-4 and Core-002. As such, the Animal Core is organized to achieve the following objectives: Purchase and maintain breeding colonies of mice and rats; To raise healthy animals in an optimal environment for research on the aging auditory system; To perform special procedures such as identification tagging and tattooing, diagnostic audiometry, obtaining tissue samples and gathering baseline information from animals; Perform diagnostic auditory brainstem response (ABR) audiometry to establish the hearing thresholds of subjects before (both acute and longitudinal) and during (longitudinal) experiments; and to maintain a secure database of vital information about colony animals, including birth dates, lineage, ABR audiometry test dates and results, and an experimental procedure log.
|
0.916 |
2016 — 2017 |
Christensen, Kenneth Eddins, Ann Krischer, Jeffrey Fawcett, Timothy Walton, Joseph |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Cc*Dni Networking Infrastructure: Campus Research Network - High Bandwidth Private Network Path For Research Data From Experiment to Analysis and Back Again At Usf @ University of South Florida
The University of South Florida (USF) is building a Campus Research Network (CRN) to provide campus research laboratories high-speed connectivity to centralized USF High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities to facilitate scientific data-driven experimental work and to enable the analysis of extremely large data sets. The CRN is a dedicated 100 Gb/s Science DMZ connecting the USF Health Informatics Institute, the Neurophysiological Laboratory, and the Auditory & Speech Sciences Laboratory to central USF HPC resources. High performance data transfer nodes (capable of sustaining over 100 Gb/s read/write from/to disk throughput) are installed near the HPC resources as well as the laboratories to facilitate high-speed data transfers, allowing for data transferred to the cluster for analysis to be immediately available to all compute nodes.
The new CRN promises to accelerate the development of innovative, data-driven experimental techniques using near real-time feedback based on the analysis of large experimental data sets to alter experimental and treatment conditions and/or medical device settings to provide a better understanding of age-related effects on brain function as well as enabling the development of brain-controlled sharing devices. The CRN also advances the understanding of diabetes and rare diseases by providing the bandwidth required to transfer the extremely large data sets curated by the Health Informatics Institute to the central USF HPC cluster. This project lays a foundation for connecting multiple Tampa-area USF campuses to the Florida Lambda Rail (and Internet2) at 100 Gb/s, allowing for state-wide, national, and international collaborations.
|
0.958 |
2016 — 2020 |
Walton, Joseph P |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Project 2 - Animal Behavior @ University of South Florida
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT- Project 2 Our long-term goal is to ameliorate the debilitating consequences of age-related hearing loss- ARHL (presbycusis). ARHL interferes with effective communication by reducing the audibility of sounds, degrading the intelligibility of speech in quiet and noisy backgrounds. The overall objective of this research is to identify and understand effective methods for mitigating these aspects of ARHL. Project 2 employs behavioral experiments with animal models toward this end, integrating the findings with those of sister projects on this Program Project grant. The central hypothesis is that targeted therapeutic interventions will induce beneficial changes in the ear and brain- central auditory system (identified with behavioral tests), leading to amelioration of chronic deficits that define presbycusis. In conjunction with sister projects, we will identify the behavioral, perceptual, neurophysiological, and molecular bases of ARHL and how they are affected by our biotherapeutic interventions. Specific Aim 1 focuses on the potential to use aldosterone supplementation to improve inner ear and brain function. Specific Aim 2 uses targeted special sounds, called augmented acoustic environments (AAEs) to improve processing of speech timing features and hearing in background noise. Specific Aim 3 evaluates a new intervention, transcranial magnetic stimulation, for the treatment of maladaptive plasticity in the aged central auditory system following peripheral hearing loss. The comprehensive framework proposed here is the first to our knowledge combining basic and applied methods to address amelioration of AHRL in a manner that allows rapid translation of research findings to clinical practice ? the foremost goal of NIA and NIH at large.
|
0.916 |
2016 — 2020 |
Walton, Joseph P |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Project 3 - Animal Neurophysiology @ University of South Florida
ABSTRACT/SUMMARY- Project 3 Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) ? presbycusis ? is a significant Public Health issue. It is the number one communication disorder and neurodegenerative condition of our aged population; and ranks as one of the top three chronic medical conditions, along with arthritis and cardiovascular diseases. Although much has been learned, the search is on for biomedical treatments that prevent, slow down or reverse the consequences of ARHL. In fact, there are no FDA-approved drugs to treat ARHL, despite a prevalence of over 40 million people in the US alone. The scope of Project 3 will delineate the functional effects on neural correlates of complex sound processing using different modulators of presbycusis. Specific Aim 1. Determine if hormonal supplementation can prevent or slow the progression of neural processing deficits observed in the aged auditory midbrain and cortex. Experimental approach: Neural correlates of temporally complex noise and signals-in-noise auditory stimulus paradigms will be assessed using multi-channel electrophysiology in animals undergoing aldosterone therapies. These measures will be compared with changes in biomarkers of aldosterone, and to behavioral correlates. Specific Aim 2. We will determine if exposing aging mice to an augmented acoustic environment (AAE) will improve neural correlates of sound processing deficits associated with presbycusis. Experimental approach: AAEs will consist of two extended, controlled exposures to specific temporally enriched and signal-in-noise background sounds presented in the free-field in the animal holding environment. Neural measures will characterize improvements in temporal processing and extraction of signals-in-noise, key features of ARHL at multiple levels of the auditory nervous system. Specific Aim 3. Determine the synergistic effects of aging and acquired hearing loss following drug- induced sensorineural hearing loss and unilateral conductive loss on auditory processing, and the neural bases of the therapeutic effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation to improve cortical maladaptive plasticity in the central auditory system. Experimental approach: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation- TMS, has been shown to be effective in treating various disorders related to maladaptive cortical plasticity, but the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic benefits of TMS are unknown. We will measure neural correlates of central plasticity following acute hearing loss using multi-channel electrophysiology and cortical local-field potentials. A major focus of experiments will be the link between maladaptive plasticity and alteration in the interplay between neural excitation and inhibition.
|
0.916 |