Nervous System and Brain Disorders

Prof. Liat Kishon-Rabin

Speech processing and brain plasticity in cochlear implant users

Prof. Kishon-Rabin investigates the effect of sensory, cognitive and linguistics processes that are involved in speech perception in optimal and degraded listening conditions in normal and pathological hearing. The different factors that influence performance assist in understanding the wide variability in performance of implanted cochlear implant users, as well as in developing habilitation protocols that are tailored to the hearingimpaired individual. Prof. Kishon-Rabin was one of the first to study functional hearing in infants with cochlear implants, for which she received worldwide recognition. She investigates the influence of auditory stimulation and experience dependent factors that drive cortical development in infants using video analysis and brain-imaging techniques. Her team are pioneers in implicit learning processes via auditory modality using fNIRS measurements, for the first time for cochlear implants in Israel.

Prof. Kishon-Rabin, PhD, is at the Department of Communication Disorders, School of Health Professions and is the Dean of Innovation in Teaching & Learning at Tel Aviv University. She completed her PhD in psychoacoustics from the Speech & Hearing Sciences Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She was the first Israeli to be awarded with the Graham Fraser Memorial Lecture by the British Cochlear Implant Group. She is an associate editor for the International Journal of Audiology. She is vice president of the European Federations of Auditory Societies (EFAS) and will serve as president from 2021-2023. In continuation to her research, which supports intervention during the early years of the developing brain, Prof. Kishon-Rabin initiated a series of social startups in infant day-cares and pre-school bringing evidence-based practice of language acquisition programs to practitioners, caretakers and parents either directly or via novel online programs.