08/20/2026
Exciting news! The Tollin lab has recieved a new NIH R01 grant, titled "Understanding the Link Between Hearing Loss and Alzheimer’s Disease."
This new multi-PI NIH R01 (R01 AG091162-01A1) grant is led by Henrique von Gersdorff, PhD, at Oregon Health & Science University and Daniel J. Tollin, PhD, at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus investigating how hearing loss and Alzheimer’s disease interact within the auditory brainstem.
Age-related hearing loss is an important risk factor for dementia, yet the neural mechanisms connecting hearing dysfunction and Alzheimer’s disease remain poorly understood. Our collaborative project will combine cellular and synaptic electrophysiology, non-invasive auditory evoked responses and behavioral tests of spatial hearing to determine how Alzheimer’s pathology alters the neural circuits responsible for binaural hearing and understanding sounds in complex environments like classrooms and workplaces.
A major goal is to determine whether changes in binaural auditory processing emerge before conventional hearing loss or cognitive symptoms, potentially providing a new physiological window into the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
This collaboration brings together complementary expertise in synaptic neurophysiology, auditory brainstem function and spatial hearing to address an increasingly important intersection between hearing and brain health.
