Center for Hearing Research (CHR)

The Center for Hearing Research at UC Irvine is a multidisciplinary group of 40 scientists spanning 10 Departments in six Schools, who are bound by a common interest in hearing research. We have been meeting since 1998, first as an informal group (“Things Auditory”) and then as the Irvine Research Unit in Hearing and Speech Sciences. We became a Campus Center in 2005.

CHR research spans a remarkably broad range of levels (e.g., molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral) and approaches (e.g., molecular biology, electrophysiology, psychophysics, computation, human imaging). Interest areas include the molecular determinants of structure and function, neural processing of acoustic information, auditory plasticity, perception of simple and complex stimuli including speech, and processing by hearing-impaired listeners. Clinical populations include patients who suffer from auditory neuropathy, and patients with cochlear implants.

The major goal CHR is to promote an understanding of hearing across all levels of biological organization. To this end, we hold regular meetings to learn about research that is ongoing in members’ laboratories and to discuss recent publications of interest. We also sponsor seminars and workshops with invited speakers from other institutions. Finally, we fund pilot projects involving collaborations among two or more members’ laboratories.