Welcome to the Hearing and Aging Research (HEAR) Laboratory (PI: Zilong Xie, Ph.D.) in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University.
We use cognitive neuroscience tools (psychophysics, subcortical and cortical EEG, and machine learning) to study the brain mechanisms that support speech understanding, and how the brain mechanisms change when an individual ages, develops hearing loss or interacts with nonnative speakers. The long-term goal is to translate knowledge from this basic research into clinical strategies to optimize speech understanding for older people, people with hearing loss, and second language learners.