VMBHRC's research programs span the full breadth of hearing and balance science — from the molecular biology of hair cells to the engineering of neural prosthetics, from childhood cochlear implant outcomes to the link between hearing loss and dementia. Each program represents a genuine frontier with the potential to transform lives.
Jennifer S. Stone & Dave W. Raible
Stone and Raible use zebrafish and mouse models to understand how the ear's delicate sensory hair cells — once destroyed by noise, aging, or drugs — might be coaxed to regrow. Their work spans both type I and type II hair cells, each playing distinct roles in how we hear and balance. The lab is a core partner in the international Hearing Restoration Project.
David L. Horn
Horn's Prosthetic Auditory Development Lab, established in 2015 at Seattle Children's, studies how deaf and hard-of-hearing children develop language after receiving cochlear implants. The research focuses on predicting which children will thrive and identifying early interventions that improve outcomes. Understanding the first year of CI use has proven especially critical for long-term language success.
Dave W. Raible & collaborators
Aminoglycoside antibiotics such as tobramycin and streptomycin — lifesaving drugs for serious infections — can permanently destroy the very hair cells needed for hearing. Cisplatin, a widely used chemotherapy agent, causes the same devastation. VMBHRC researchers are developing a new class of protective drugs that can be given alongside these agents to prevent hearing damage without compromising their therapeutic efficacy.
James O. Phillips
Phillips directs the Dizziness and Balance Center at UW Medical Center, caring for patients with debilitating conditions like Ménière's disease and bilateral vestibular loss — disorders that rob people of their ability to drive, work, or even walk safely. His lab develops an implantable vestibular neurostimulator designed to restore the brain's sense of balance the way a cochlear implant restores hearing.
Jay T. Rubinstein & VMBHRC collaborators
Epidemiological evidence now firmly links untreated hearing loss to significantly accelerated cognitive decline and increased Alzheimer's risk. VMBHRC researchers are participating in multi-site trials testing whether cochlear implants and hearing aids can meaningfully delay or prevent dementia onset in at-risk older adults. Parallel pharmacological research aims to prevent the cochlear changes that initiate this cascade.
Bonnie K. Lau
Lau directs the Laboratory for Auditory Neuroscience and Development (LAND Lab), combining brain imaging and behavioral measures to understand how the auditory system matures and how early hearing shapes language acquisition. Her research focuses on identifying infants and young children at risk for language delays — especially those with hearing loss or autism — and building objective clinical tools to guide earlier, personalized intervention.
David J. Perkel & Jay T. Rubinstein
Perkel uses songbirds as a powerful animal model for studying vocal learning — how the brain acquires, memorizes, and produces complex learned sounds — with direct implications for understanding human speech. Rubinstein's team has developed an algorithm that dramatically improves music perception in cochlear implant users, now being tested in a 20-patient clinical trial. Both lines of work converge on how the brain processes and produces sound.