Diverse models, unified goals: Discovering auditory structure and function in the Lauer Lab

Lauer Lab members conduct a wide range of experiments designed to understand the complex relationships between the structure and function of the auditory system and its role in health and disease. You might see experimenters solving questions about the effects of hearing loss on brain function and behavior, in natural aging, and in diseases such as Alzheimer's. On an ordinary day, you would see these questions being answered from multiple complementary perspectives. You would find scientists working on laboratory and wild mice and tissue specimens from a range of species such as bats, marmosets, all the way up to humans. You could see that this variety of models is matched only by the diversity of ways they study them, providing plenty of opportunities for any researcher to find tools that they find fascinating. From anatomical approaches, like confocal microscopy to investigate the brain and cochlea, physiological techniques to measure hearing including auditory brainstem responses and otoacoustic emissions, optogenetics to study auditory efferents, and behavioral studies investigating the role of hearing in behavior, cognition, and affective states. Join us for a virtual tour and witness the exciting discoveries unfolding in the Lauer Lab! [Work supported by Rubenstein Fund for Hearing Research (R03AG081747 and R01DC016641).]