Victoria Researcher to join international study to understand hearing defects

Details

Published on 11 April 2013

A New Zealand researcher has been chosen to join an international team which is investigating ways to improve the diagnosis and treatment of hearing defects.
Dr. Paul Teal, a lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University, has joined a team which will build a finite element model of the cochlea, a spiral chamber located inside the ear that turns sound vibrations into electrical signals which travel along nerves to the brain and allow us to hear.

Victoria is the only university outside Europe to have a researcher as part of the successful bid for funding by the European Commission.
Dr. Teal’s inclusion is exceptional because the Commission, which represents the interests of the entire European Union, usually only pays for collaborators based outside Europe to travel there, but not for their time.

Dr. Teal was asked to join the team because of his world-leading research into better ways of measuring the cochlear microphonic, which is the electrical signal generated inside the cochlea. His work could lead to the development of new techniques to more accurately assess hearing loss.

The project, which will provide a realistic, three dimensional model of the physics of motion in a working cochlea, involves researchers from six European universities and two European companies, including a team at the world-leading Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
”

Source: Victoria University