10 minute read
Research Social Creatures. Bert Gambini. Les Paul in His Own Words. Sue Baker
E M E R G I N G RESEARCH GRANTS
Socialization is critical, says Micheal Dent, Ph.D., for humans and animals alike.
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Social Creatures
2019 Emerging Research Grants recipient Micheal Dent, Ph.D., discovers a surprising factor that can skew research results.
By Bert Gambini
Animal models can serve as gateways for understanding many human communication disorders. Insights into the genetic paths possibly responsible for conditions such as autism and schizophrenia often begin by studying acoustic behavior in mice.
But a September 2019 eNeuro study from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, suggests that the established practice of socially isolating mice for such purposes might actually make them poor research models for humans, and a simple shift to a more realistic social environment could greatly improve the utility of the future studies.
That’s because how mice are raised affects how they hear in the real world, according to Micheal Dent, Ph.D, a professor in University at Buffalo’s department of psychology and coauthor of the paper with Laurel Screven, a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins, who was a University at Buffalo graduate student when the research was conducted.
Socialization is critical, according to Dent. “We need to raise our animals in more naturalistic situations since it turns out that it has an effect on their acoustic communication, including how they hear and how long it takes to train them on a behavioral task,” says Dent, an expert in the perception of complex auditory stimuli in birds and mammals.
“Normally when we do these studies, we isolate the animals for their entire lives,” she adds. “This is not a good model for humans because we’re creating these odd worlds for the mice. It’s not natural. Having the mice live together changes their perception of vocalizations, so clearly it is important.”
The findings of the eNeuro paper began as a curiosity Screven expressed to Dent, her dissertation adviser at UB. Screven was interested in the effects of social experience on acoustic communication in mice. Previous research demonstrated that when female mice have babies, their neural responses to calls, or ultrasonic vocalizations, change.
Their response depended on whether or not the mice had pups. Screven wondered if the social experience of vocalizations somehow changes the composition of the brain, and changes the composition of the auditory areas of the brain. It was a possibility that had not been previously studied.
“We can’t tell what kind of neural effects are taking place from our behavioral research, but what we can say is that we should not be isolating mice,” Dent says. “We should put them together in order to create a more realistic situation, one that’s more applicable to human communication. Knowing how to raise and care for these animals can improve research on human communication.”
For their study, Dent and Screven first trained mice to poke their noses through one hole to start a repeating vocalization and then to poke their noses through a different hole when they heard a different vocalization. Mice emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), which vary in frequency, duration, and intensity.
The collective differences in these characteristics is the call’s “shape.” The shapes perceived by the mice are similar to how humans hear different words.
The researchers found that the socially isolated mice required significantly more time to learn to discriminate between the USVs than the socially housed mice, and they used different aspects of the USVs to do it.
“The goal of the research in our lab is to first establish the baseline acoustic communication behavior of the mice so in the future we can start understanding communication in mice with genetic manipulations,” Dent says.
“If we look at the genes found in humans who stutter, for instance, or have high frequency hearing loss, or accelerated age-related hearing loss, we can see what happens when we knock out those same genes in the mice,” she says. “Eventually, we can attempt to ‘fix’ the disorders in mice, leading to possible treatments for humans.”
For Dent, the findings are immediately applicable and she says the next step in her research will be to house mice together in future experiments. In mice, not having regular social contact resulted in abnormal communication skills.
“Just the finding that the mice train faster when they live together is important for anyone in my line of research wanting to get the data out faster,” Dent says. “But I also think that creating a more natural living situation for the mice will make the results of these laboratory experiments more relevant for human communication and studying how humans process vocalizations.”
And now, during lockdowns caused by COVID-19, Dent adds, “We could easily see similar issues in some or all of the humans socially isolating during the coronavirus pandemic. Like mice, we humans need live interactions on a regular basis.”
This originally appeared on the website for the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, at buffalo.edu. Micheal Dent, Ph.D., is a psychology professor at University at Buffalo. Her 2019 Emerging Research Grant was funded by the Les Paul Foundation. For more, see hhf.org/erg and lespaulfoundation.org. For references, see hhf.org/summer2020-references.
Honoring Les Paul’s Legacy
Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) is grateful to the Les Paul Foundation and its trustees for their ongoing and generous support of tinnitus research through HHF’s Emerging Research Grants (ERG) program and the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP) since 2013.
The 21 researchers the Les Paul Foundation has funded so far have made impressive strides toward a better understanding of tinnitus, as well as developing treatments and therapies that can benefit anyone affected by this condition, including and especially musicians. HHF looks forward to continuing our relationship with the Les Paul Foundation and honoring the legacy of Les Paul, the musician, writer, and inventor.
With 90 percent of tinnitus patients also experiencing hearing loss, funding this work is critical to improving quality of life. We are honored to share in Les Paul’s incredible legacy, and the alignment of our missions ensures that millions will be helped by the discoveries made through sustained funding.
We appreciate the Les Paul Foundation’s commitment to a tinnitus cure and its trust in HHF’s rigorous grant review process. —Gina Russo
Guitar legend Les Paul had a hearing loss resulting from being hit accidentally on each ear, years apart.
Les Paul in His Own Words
By Sue Baker
Les Paul, who was born on June 9, 1915, and died in 2009, was famous for the solid body electric guitar and many innovations related to recording music. He also had compromised hearing, and wore hearing aids in both ears. Although his hearing loss was not caused by loud noise, almost all of his rock musician friends have had some level of hearing loss from performing and being around loud music. Les and most of his musician friends also have had tinnitus.
In his autobiography, “Les Paul in His Own Words,” Les shares how he lost his hearing:
“I was very fortunate with my new Gibson deal, but my luck went the other way when an old friend who came to visit playfully cuffed the side of my head with his open hand.… He didn’t hit me hard, but his open palm just happened to clap over my right ear, and the sudden pressure popped my eardrum. And it was very bad because an infection got started and developed into mastoiditis, which creates a lot of rotten wood and swelling that puts pressure on the brain.
“I was left with a constant pounding, like I had Buddy Rich in my ear. This was driving me mad [so] I went to Dr. Moore, an ear specialist at New York Hospital, who took one look and said, ‘We’re
operating tomorrow.’ … [After the surgery] to my great relief, the constant pounding stopped. Buddy Rich was gone, but so was most of the hearing in that ear, and there was no getting it back.
“And then, unbelievably, a very similar thing happened [a few years later] with the other ear when… a guitar player I knew came up behind me to do the ‘guess who?’ thing. Somehow, his hand slapped over my good ear, and I heard the eardrum pop just like before. I didn’t say anything to the guy, never did tell him, but I excused myself and went to my room and just cried because now both ears were blown, and both by accidents where a friend just accidentally hit me in the ear.
“I had to have a total of five operations on my inner ear and eardrums. My hearing was permanently impaired, and I’ve been dependent on hearing aids ever since. And one of the things I’m working on now is finding ways to improve the hearing aid.”
The book was published in 2006, and Les continued his work on hearing aids until he passed away at age 94.
The Les Paul Foundation continues Les’s search to improve hearing through annual funding to Hearing Health Foundation’s Emerging Research Grants
program to find a cure for tinnitus. Sue Baker is the Les Paul Foundation’s program director. In addition to supporting tinnitus research through HHF’s Emerging Research Grants program, the Les Paul Foundation also supports grassroots efforts to encourage young people to protect their hearing. Print and video resources are available at lespaulfoundation.org/education. For more, see hhf.org/erg.
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