Aravindakshan Parthasarathy, PhD

  • Assistant Professor, Communication Science and Disorders

Phone

4123830280

Personal Website

www.parthalab.com

Education & Training

PhD, Purdue University

Campus Address

5060A Forbes Tower
3600 Atwood Street
Pittsburgh PA 15213

One-Line Research Description

Neural mechanisms underlying age-related and noise-induced hearing loss

The primary interest of our lab is in understanding how the peripheral auditory system and the central auditory pathway interact in various forms of hearing loss. The research program integrates study of human clinical populations and animal models. In humans, we combine perceptual tasks with measures of listening effort (pupillometry) to assess behavioral and cognitive aspects of speech comprehension. In animal models we use neuronal recordings from various stages of the auditory pathway combined with immunohistology to inform mechanistic hypotheses. Non-invasive EEG-like auditory evoked potentials act as the "Rosetta stone", translating the language of the brain between humans and animal models. The overall goal is to inform diagnosis and track the benefits of interventional therapies in clinical populations with hearing loss by utilizing insights obtained from animal models with similar forms of pathology.

Representative Publications

Grant KJ, Parthasarathy A, Vasilkov V, Caswell-Midwinter B, Freitas ME, de Gruttola V, Polley DB, Liberman MC. “Predicting neural deficits in sensorineural hearing loss from word recognition scores” Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 23.

Chen JX, Whitton JP, Parthasarathy A, Hancock KE, Polley DB. “Fluctuations in Subjective Tinnitus Ratings Over Time: Implications for Clinical Research” Otol Neurotol. 2020 Oct;41(9):e1167-e1173.

Parthasarathy A, Pinto SR, Lewis RM, Goedicke WB, Polley DB. “Data-driven segmentation of audiometric phenotypes across a large clinical cohort” Sci Rep. 2020 Apr 21;10(1):6704.

Parthasarathy A, Hancock KE, Bennett K, DeGruttola V, Polley DB. “Bottom-up and top-down neural signatures of disordered multi-talker speech perception in adults with normal hearing” Elife. 2020 Jan 21;9:e51419.

Parthasarathy A, Herrmann B, Bartlett EL. “Aging alters envelope representations of speech-like sounds in the inferior colliculus.” Neurobiol Aging. 2019 Jan;73:30-40.

Parthasarathy A, Kujawa SG. “Synaptopathy in the aging cochlea: Characterizing early-neural deficits in auditory temporal envelope processing” J Neurosci. 2018 Aug 8;38(32):7108-7119.

Herrmann B, Parthasarathy A, Bartlett EL. “Aging affects dual encoding of periodicity and envelope shape in rat inferior colliculus neurons” Eur J Neurosci. 2017 Jan;45(2):299-311.