Hearing and Hearing Healthcare

Research Labs

The Healthy Hearing Lab

The Healthy Hearing Lab, led by Dr. Sara K. Mamo, is dedicated to advancing our understanding of the hearing and communication needs of older adults. Our mission is to translate research into meaningful strategies that enhance social engagement and improve quality of life.

Our work spans a range of studies, including assessments of hearing and cognitive function, surveys and focus groups exploring perceptions of aging and hearing loss, and intervention trials aimed at integrating hearing care into primary health services.

We are especially focused on improving access to hearing health care for populations that have been historically underrepresented in research and underserved in clinical practice.

Advancing Research in Hearing Healthcare (ARHL) Lab

Directed by Dr. Jasleen Singh, the ARHL Lab focuses on improving the accessibility and affordability of hearing healthcare. The lab’s goal is to identify barriers and facilitators to hearing aid adoption and to develop targeted, patient‑informed solutions that are feasible for real‑world implementation. Research in the lab uses a broad range of methods to examine how people access, adopt, and use hearing aids across both provider and consumer driven models of hearing healthcare care, including implementation science, user‑centered design, machine learning, and eye‑tracking. A core emphasis of the lab is stakeholder‑engaged research. This includes collaborations with patients, clinicians, industry partners, and community organizations to develop solutions that are responsive to the needs of underserved and historically marginalized populations. The lab’s work is designed to translate research findings into clinical and policy relevant evidence aimed at improving hearing aid use. 

Spatial Hearing Lab

Spatial hearing not only allows listeners to locate relevant sound sources within the environment but also helps them to better process those sounds in the presence of competing noise. Dr. Ben Zobel and Dr. Rich Freyman work to better understand the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive mechanisms that contribute to these benefits of spatial hearing, and how age-related changes in these mechanisms may contribute to the hearing and communication challenges that older adults commonly experience within noisy, complex environments. Current projects use behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to examine how spatial perception reduces auditory confusion among competing sound streams, and how the neural processing of spatially separated sounds changes with age.  Results will contribute to a better understanding of how listeners effectively navigate challenging auditory scenes, and may also help to inform the development of clinical strategies for listeners who struggle.