Indian-American Neuroscientist receives USD 867,000 grant

January 06: A US research agency has awarded an Indian American neuroscientist, Khaleel Rezak, a five year USD 866902 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant for further research on his projects. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Rezak for his research on how the brain processes everyday sounds may lead to therapies for age-related hearing problems and Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). Originally from Chennai, Razak, is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). His lab at UCR focuses on how the auditory brain processes behaviourally relevant sounds and how those mechanisms are altered by developmental experience, disease and ageing. The NSF grant will specifically support research on how the auditory cortex of the brain processes information about sound locations. "Precise sound localisation can be a matter of life and death," he explained adding, "The auditory cortex is necessary for sound localisation, but our understanding of the relevant neural processing is rudimentary. Sound localisation is also interesting from a computational perspective because we explore how neurons integrate inputs from the two ears." The NSF funding will also allow Razak to investigate the neural computations that generate cortical maps underlying sound localisation behaviour in the pallid bat. "The pallid bat is a bit unusual among bats in that it uses echolocation for general orientation and obstacle avoidance, but listens for prey on the ground, like crickets, scorpions and millipedes." "Behavioural studies indicate the pallid bat can localise sounds with an accuracy of about 2 degrees," he said. Pallid bats and humans appear to process sound locations similarly, calculating direction via intra-cortical networks that are little understood. The project will provide fundamental insights on how intra-cortical networks shape feature detectors and maps. In addition to basic sound localisation mechanisms, Razak's research also focuses on mouse models of ageing and Fragile X Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. Age-related hearing loss is the most preventable hearing-related problem in the world, the neuroscientist explained. "People develop problems with processing rapid changes in sound frequency," he said. "It's a processing deficit that accumulates with age, a declining ability to distinguish, for example, the difference between 'bah' and 'dah.'" This problem gets more acute in difficult listening conditions such as a noisy room. While hearing aids amplify sound, they don't improve speech recognition because the brain itself has changed, Razak added. "Impaired speech recognition may lead to isolation and reduce cognitive abilities," he said. "We hope to identify the neuron types that seem to be lost or changed during ageing. There may be combinations of behavioural or pharmacological therapies that could delay or prevent these changes. But we need to characterise the age-related changes first. - Siasat