Background

Lina Reiss received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 2005, with a focus on neurophysiology of sound localization circuits in the auditory brainstem. She holds a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University. After receiving her Ph.D., she spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow in the area of cochlear implants and psychoacoustics at the University of Iowa. In 2010, she was appointed as faculty in the Department of Otolaryngology and the Oregon Hearing Research Center, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Behavioral Neuroscience.

Summary of current research

There are two laboratories: a human clinical research laboratory, and basic science laboratory. In the clinical lab, we study pitch and speech perception in children and adults with cochlear implants and/or hearing aids, with an emphasis on binaural fusion of pitch and speech, with implications for auditory object formation/segregation and speech perception in background noise.  In the basic science lab, we are currently studying changes in neural health after cochlear implantation, with the goal of reducing variability and improving outcomes, especially in older individuals. 

Techniques used include psychophysics, speech synthesis, hearing aid and cochlear implant programming, auditory brainstem responses, compound action potential recordings via a cochlear implant, computational modeling, and immunohistochemistry.  Software/hardware platforms used in the lab include MATLAB and Visual C++, and research interfaces for direct cochlear implant stimulation.

We also have collaborations with other laboratories on topics ranging from outcomes with cochlear implantation in underserved populations to objective imaging methods to animal behavior and cortical auditory neurophysiology.