Visiting audiology expert gives audience unique 3D tour of auditory brain
Published in UC Chronicle
9 May 2008
The University of Canterbury's Department of Communication Disorders recently played host to a world expert in the field of central auditory processing.
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| Professor Frank Musiek, auditory processing disorders expert, with an image of the brain he gave a 3D tour of during his Erskine visit. |
Professor Frank Musiek, Professor and Director of Auditory Research in the Department of Communication Sciences and Professor of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine, University of Connecticut, spent six weeks in the department as an Erskine Fellow.
While here, Professor Musiek taught the Auditory Processing Disorders course and in the week prior to his departure he gave an Erskine presentation to a crowd of about 120 staff and students from throughout the University. His audience donned 3-D glasses to be taken on a three-dimensional tour of the auditory brain, giving them a unique visual perspective on some of the anatomical intricacies of the central auditory nervous system.
Central auditory processing can be described simply as "what we do with what we hear". Professor Musiek said he and his research associates were interested in how the brain hears.
"A lot of people think that we hear with our ears, but we don't. We hear with our brains and our ears conduct the signals into the brain. I'm interested to see what happens when the brain doesn't work right. How does it affect our hearing?
"There's been so much done on when problems affect the ear but very little proportionally has been done on what happens when the brain isn't working right, what are known as central auditory processing disorders (CAPD)."
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| Audience members donned 3D glasses for the presentation |
Professor Musiek said there was a shortage of audiologists with expertise in CAPD in Australasia, hence his invitation to speak at the Australian Association of Audiologists in Private Practice (AAAPP) conference at La Trobe University in Melbourne in mid-March.
The special conference focusing on central auditory processing was pulled together at last-minute due to his being just across the Tasman.
Professor Musiek, a renowned hearing researcher, scholar, teacher and clinical audiologist, was the 2007 recipient of the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology, presented by the American Academy of Audiology. He has published more than 140 refereed articles, eight books, no fewer than 35 book chapters, and has presented more than 220 invited lectures and seminars around the world. He has also developed four clinical audiologic tests, three of which are mainstays of the clinical central auditory test battery.
While at Canterbury Professor Musiek received notification that two volumes he co-authored with Professor Gail Chermak of Washington State University — Handbook of (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder – Volume 1: Auditory Neuroscience and Diagnosis and its companion, Volume II: Comprehensive Intervention — had been awarded the 2007 Speech, Language, and Hearing Book of the Year by The Essential Language, Speech and Hearing Bookshelf.