Home Department: undeclared
Supported by: Ted & Colleen Friedel
Mentor: John Oghalai, Otolaryngology

Zina is examining the role of efferent activity, which sends signals from the brain to the cochlea (the auditory portion of the inner ear), on frequency discrimination. Behavioral training will be performed to help measure frequency discrimination, which is the minimum frequency difference between two tones a mouse can differentiate. Previous experiments on anesthetized mice have found that background noise modulates efferent activity, altering how the cochlea detects sound and impacting speech perception with background noise. This experiment will lead to a better understanding of auditory efferent function, which is impaired in mice with hearing loss.

Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 24, 2016:

Behavioral Assessment of Frequency Discrimination in Mice

Zina Jawadi¹, Jinkyung Kim¹, Homer Abaya¹, John Oghalai¹
[Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery¹, Stanford University]